Pro-Palestinian hackers deface Israeli websites

An Anonymous-affiliated hacking group launched its campaign against Israeli websites on Tuesday, defacing a few dozen home pages of musicians and nonprofit groups.

The campaign appeared to fall far short of the “electronic Holocaust” promised by the group. Pro-Palestinian hackers have targeted Israeli sites every April 7 since 2013, vowing to take down banks and cultural institutions.

{mosads}OpIsrael, as the campaign is known on Twitter, is the work of hacking collective AnonGhost and its supporters.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) warned Jews over the weekend about a potential hacking campaign that could target individuals on their cellphones.

“In the past three years, anti-Israel hackers participating in this campaign have targeted Israeli sites with limited success, but they are now widening their attacks to target individual Israelis with threatening anti-Semitic rhetoric,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, in a statement released Saturday.

“Israel and Jewish communities worldwide should be on alert, as digital terrorism takes many forms and hackers are getting more sophisticated,” Foxman said.

Members of AnonGhost reportedly launched a series of denial-of-service attacks on Tuesday, flooding Israeli sites with false traffic in order to prevent normal users from accessing them.

The group also defaced several small sites with photos of a Muslim holy site and militants holding the flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to The Associated Press.

Those sites included the home pages for the Israeli Center for Excellence through Education, the Israeli Urological Association, and others, Ynet News reported.

Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, was targeted, along with the country’s education ministry and main government portal, though none was affected, according to Ynet.