[IsraelTimes] Users unable to reach sites with gov.il extension for an hour, as National Cyber Directorate reportedly declares state of emergency over incident.Israeli government websites were downed for over an hour due to a major cyberattack on Monday evening, officials said.
Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel held an assessment with officials due to the "broad cyberattack" on government websites, a statement from his office said.
Users attempting to enter sites with gov.il extensions were unable to for at least an hour, before the sites slowly began to come back online.
"Operations have been carried out by communications companies in order to return the service as soon as possible, and the service is gradually returning," the Communications Ministry said.
"The ministry will continue to monitor [the situation] until full restoration," it added.
Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks tweeted that a "significant disruption has been registered on multiple networks supplied by Israel’s leading [internet] providers," with a graph showing connectivity interruption.
An official cited by Hebrew-language media reports said the National Cyber Directorate declared a state of emergency in order to study the extent of the damage caused by the "massive" cyberattack.
According to assessments, the Israeli sites were taken down via a denial-of-service attack, which bombards websites with junk traffic to render them unreachable, though this remained unconfirmed.
Israeli officials did not immediately say who was behind the attack, but some media reports were quick to point the finger at Iran.
Israel and Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites....have for years been involved in a largely quiet cyberwar, which occasionally bubbles to the surface.
Jerusalem Post reported that an allegedly Iranian-affiliated hacker group had grabbed credit for the apparent attack. The ministries of health, interior and justice as well as the prime minister's office were all at least briefly down Monday.
Access to some of the sites had been restored, the government said. While the homepages of some government pages were down, subdomains continued to work, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Iranian state TV said Iran
...They hate had thwarted an attack on the nuclear site in Fordow. Iran has previously accused Israel of carrying out similar attacks in the past on the country's nuclear facilities.