Israeli Websites Hacked: Pakistani Hacker Claims Responsibility, Says Cyber Attack Was In Support Of Palestine

A Pakistani hacker by the name of “H4x0r HuSsY” has claimed responsibility for a massive cyberattack campaign that has shut down and defaced hundreds of Israeli websites Wednesday. The campaign is apparently in celebration of Pakistan Zindabad Independence Day and is done in support of Palestine.

So far, the campaign has affected 650 Israeli government, personal and corporate websites. The hacker infiltrated the servers and replaced the homepages with his own. The hacker also uploaded the following message to the websites.

“LONG LIVE PALESTINE – PAKISTAN ZINDABAD HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO & FROM TEAM MADLEETS.”

Madleets is a forum that claims to be an “ethical and 1337 [“leet” – Internet slang for “elite”] White Hat hackers community” dedicated to helping people guard against hackers. Outside of wishing a happy independence day to Pakistan, neither the forum nor its official Facebook page make reference to the cyberattack campaign.

The hacker told The Hackers News that it plans to attack many more websites soon, and that the total affected will be well over 1,000.

The international hacker collective Anonymous declared a major campaign against Israeli websites in April to protest airstrikes in Gaza. The New York Times website was also shut down for a while Wednesday, leading some to report that it was the result of a cyberattack. These reports were never confirmed, and there does not appear to be a link to the attack by Pakistani hackers. The New York Times said the issue was due to an internal error