Hackers associated with activist group Anonymous are being blamed for an attack which targeted Israeli government websites. The defence ministry, the education ministry and the Central Bureau of Statistics were reportedly among those attacked. "As of 0900 GMT the sites of the government of Israel are available to the public, as they have been all weekend," the finance ministry said in a statement. However, tests on Sunday afternoon in the UK appeared to show problems loading up some Israeli government sites. Anonymous has previously threatened to "disrupt and erase Israel from cyberspace" in protest over its mistreatment of Palestinians. But Professor Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, who founded the Jewish state's National Cyber Bureau, played down the motives of the attack.
"Anonymous doesn't have the ability, nor is it its aim to destroy the country's essential infrastructure," he said. "If it was, it wouldn't have announced it in advance," indicating the aim was probably to stir debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last week, it was reported that Anonymous had hacked a number of North Korean websites, including its official Twitter account.
A tweet which read "hacked" was posted along with a link to a website showing the country’s flag and a Guy Fawkes-style mask, which is synonymous with the cyber movement. Anonymous also claimed to have breached North Korea's Flickr account and to have accessed 15,000 usernames and passwords from a university database. The action is as part of its so-called Operation Free Korea with the hackers demanding uncensored internet access for all North Koreans. They also want Kim Jong-Un to step down to make way for a democratically-elected government.
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