An Iran-linked hacker group claims to have breached the computer network of a sensitive Israeli nuclear facility in an incident declared by the “anonymous” hackers as a protest against the war in Gaza.
Hackers claim to have stolen and published thousands of documents – including PDFs, emails and PowerPoint slides – from the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center. The secret facility, which houses a nuclear reactor linked to Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program, has historically been a target of Hamas rockets.
In a social media post explaining their intentions, the group claimed that “as we are not as similar as the bloodthirsty Netanyahu and his terrorist army, we carried out the operation in such a way that no civilians were harmed.” hurt “.
Despite this statement, in another message on social networks, the group declared that it “did not intend to carry out a nuclear explosion but that this operation is dangerous and that anything can happen”, accompanied by an animated video depicting a nuclear detonation and a call for the evacuation of the neighboring town of Dimona and the town of Yeruham.
Although the released documents potentially suggest that the hackers managed to compromise a computer network connected to the facility, there is no evidence that they were able to hack into its operational technology (OT) network. Even so, nuclear facilities have numerous safety systems to prevent dangerous incidents.
The Israeli embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.
Gil Messing, chief of staff at Israeli cybersecurity firm Checkpoint, told Recorded Future News that his company was aware of the Anonymous group, created with its own Twitter and Telegram accounts at the start of the country’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Checkpoint notably observed that the hackers echoed attacks carried out by Iranian groups, with Messing suggesting that they could all be the same groups operating under different names.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
“So far, some of these attacks have been fake, some have been genuine, so regarding this one in particular, it’s hard to say whether it’s genuine,” Messing said.
Like messing around previously told Recorded Future News that the country’s cybersecurity companies have been closely monitoring Iranian state-backed hackers since the Gaza war began last October. Iran supports the Palestinian group Hamas.
Cyberattacks against Israel and its allies have been “incessant” since the start of the war, he said. Threat actors cause huge data dumpsdivided into government computer systemspirate Israeli security camerasintensified disinformation campaigns and targeted industrial control systems at the other end of the world.
In this incident, he added that Checkpoint analyzed the documents published by the hackers. “We can say that they are mostly not very sensitive (mainly regarding emails, names, vendors they work with) but could be for future attacks like phishing and others .”
Messing stressed that the documents did not prove that the hackers had control of the facility’s operational systems.
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