Cyberattack Temporarily Shuts Down Israeli Government Websites

JERUSALEM, Israel – A cyberattack forced Israeli government websites offline for about an hour Monday evening, officials said.

Users were unable to access websites using the GOV.IL domain, including websites for the health, interior, justice, and welfare ministries, as well as the Prime Minister’s Office. All the websites have since been restored.

Israel’s cyber authority said the attack was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which floods websites with traffic from multiple sources to interrupt service.

"In the past few hours, a denial of service attack against a communications provider was identified. As a result, access to several websites, among them government websites, was blocked for a short time. As of now, all of the websites are operational,” Israel’s National Cyber Directorate said.

The directorate has declared a state of emergency to study the extent of the attack’s damage.

Israeli officials did not immediately name who was responsible for the cyberattack, but Israeli media quickly blamed Iran, which has been engaged in a shadow cyberwar with Israel for years.

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