Anonymous Group Takes Down Mossad’s Website Over Gaza Conflict

The hacktivist group Anonymous has reportedly taken down the official website of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad against Israel’s military incursion in Gaza, which has resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties. The government of Israel has yet to comment on the Mossad hack attack.

The ‘Hacktivists’ were able to take down Mossad’s website in a Distributed Denial of Service <(DDoS) attack early morning, claims a statement on one of the Anonymous hacker’s Twitter account. The attack on the website is supposed to be severe as it has been over 10 hours and the site is still down at the time of writing.

The Anonymous group has already targeted a number of other Israeli organizations as part of a campaign titled “Operation Save Gaza” in the mission to stop this “massacre.”

Anonymous group has also claimed responsibility of taking down multiple Israeli government sites following the death of one of the organization’s members. The member named Tayeb Abu Shehada, a 22-year-old, was killed during a protest in the village of Huwwara in the West Bank by Israeli forces over the weekend.

The hacktivist group launched a hacking campaign Operation Save Gaza against Israeli government coinciding with the Israel’s Operation Protective Edge on July 7. Since then, Anonymous group have taken down “thousands” of Israeli-based websites including Israel’s Defence Ministry and the Tel Aviv Police websites.

“We are calling upon the Anonymous collective, and the elite hacker groups to join our crusade, and to wage cyber war against the state of Israel once more,” said a public statement from the group posted online last Friday. “As a collective ‘Anonymous’ does not hate Israel, it hates that Israel’s government is committing genocide & slaughtering unarmed people in Gaza to obtain more land at the border.“

As the news broke that hundreds of “Israeli government home pages have been replaced by graphics, slogans, and auto-playing audio files,” Anonymous claimed responsibility for the attacks, further releasing 170 log-in details last Monday which they claimed belonged to Israeli officials.

Two years ago, the same group launched hundreds of attacks on Israeli sites with #OpIsrael targeting Israeli websites, during the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) previous operation ‘Pillar of Defense’ in Gaza.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s data was completely wiped out and the group was able to leak the data of 5,000 Israeli officials as well as hacked into the Israeli Deputy Premier’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, thereby replacing it with pro-Palestinian messages.

Also a year back, the group claimed to have attacked 100,000 websites, stating that their attacks had caused $3 billion in damages to Israel.

CIA admits to spying on Senate committee

After months of denials, CIA Director John Brennan apologizes for spying on Senate Intelligence Committee computers.

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday admitted that it improperly gained access to computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to prepare a report on a CIA detention and interrogation program.
The agency's inspector general -- an internal watchdog -- concluded that some CIA employees "acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding" between the CIA and the Senate when it penetrated the computer network, said CIA spokesperson Dean Boyd in a statement shared with CNET News.
CIA Director John Brennan apologized to Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss about the actions of some of the agency's officials. Brennan is forming an accountability committee, led by former Indiana Sen. Even Bayh, that will examine the inspector general's report and recommend potential disciplinary action and ways to address broader issues.
The independent computer network that the CIA tapped was established in 2009 for Congress to review CIA documents during an investigation into alleged torture and abuse in a detention and interrogation program from the George W. Bush administration.
The CIA snooping became public in March after Sen. Feinstein accused the agency of improperly monitoring the computer network. Today's apology comes after months of denial from Brennan.
"When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong," Brennan said at the time, according to The New York Times.
The Senate's more than 6,000 page report on the now-defunct detention and interrogation program will be released to the public, possibly as soon as next month, according to The Hill.