‘Labs working on vaccine fended off cyberattack’

As a cyberattack shut down hundreds of Israeli websites last week, research centers working on a vaccine for the novel coronavirus were also targeted by a cyberattack, Channel 12 reported on Monday.

The attacks attempted and failed to damage the vaccine development process, but did not attempt to steal information.

Cyberattacks have been reported on other vaccine research centers around the world, including in the US and UK. Some of the attacks have been blamed on Russia and China.

Important aspects of the country’s efforts to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus are networked and are vulnerable to a variety of cyberattacks, Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) Chief Yigal Unna said in April.

Cybersecurity firm Checkpoint Software Technologies explained that cyberattacks related to the coronavirus are on the rise in Israel and the world with 20,000 attacks reported every day throughout the world, despite the overall number of cyberattacks dropping slightly.

As of Thursday evening, there was no indication that Iran stood behind the attack on the Israeli websites. According to Checkpoint, the attack was conducted by nine attackers who have been operating since April. Their profiles seem to connect them to Turkey, North Africa and the Gaza Strip. “This doesn’t mean there aren’t more, but we don’t know [enough] to confirm an Iranian operation at this stage,” he said.

Factories in Israel reported a second cyberattack on their websites on Thursday evening, according to KAN. The attackers demanded a ransom of tens of thousands of dollars in order for the factories to not get their information published, and threatened to halt production lines. The Manufacturers’ Association of Israel opened a headquarters to help affected factories.

It was unclear if the second attack was carried out by the same group.

Checkpoint explained that the cyberattacks last week did not seem especially unusual and happen almost every day.

The attacks came after Iran reportedly targeted Israeli water systems with a cyberattack in April, with Israel allegedly responding by launching a cyberattack on Iran’s Shahid Rajaee Port, located near the Strait of Hormuz.

The alleged Iranian cyberattack on Israeli water and sewage facilities took place on April 24. The attack caused a pump at a municipal water system in the Sharon region to stop working. Operations resumed shortly thereafter, but it was recorded as an exceptional event, according to The New York Times.

A security company investigating the incident found that malware caused the shutdown, and the incident was reported to the Israel National Cyber Directorate and other Israeli intelligence agencies. Officials found that the malware had come from one of the offensive cyberunits in the IRGC. The attack and the quality of the attack were described as “miserable” by intelligence officials, the Times reported.

Amos Yadlin, executive director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies and former head of IDF Military Intelligence, told 103FM on Thursday that “We’ve all known for a decade already that cyber is the new dimension of war in the 21st century.”

Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.