Israel hit with 44 million cyber attacks in Gaza protest

The Israeli government has seen over 44 million attempts to hack its collection of websites in the past few days, following its renewed airstrikes on Gaza.

Israeli finance minister Yuval Steinitz minister made the claim on Monday, but insisted that only one of the attempts had been successful, according to Reuters.

Steinitz reportedly refused to reveal which site had been hit and at the time of publishing the Israeli London Embassy had not responded to V3's request for comment.

The nature of the attacks remains unknown, although it is believed they were mainly distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults.

DDoS are a basic form of cyber attack designed to bring website offline by overloading them with page requests.

The minister also said such attacks on Israeli networks are common, boasting that the government fights of at least a few hundred cyber assaults per day.

Steinitz claimed that the new influx of attacks is being managed, stating the country already has adequate defences to deal with such assaults.

"The ministry's computer division will continue to block the millions of cyber attacks," Reuters reported Steinitz as saying.

"We are enjoying the fruits of our investment in recent years in developing computerised defence systems."

The attacks have been reported to mainly stem from Palestinian territories, though at the time of publishing V3 had been unable to confirm this.

Meanwhile, the Anonymous hacktivist collective has said its members were behind many of the attacks.

"It has come to our attention that the Israeli government has ignored repeated warnings about the abuse of human rights, shutting down the internet in Israel and mistreating its own citizens and those of its neighbouring countries," Anonymous wrote in a statement.

"November 2012 will be a month to remember for the Israeli defence forces and internet security forces. We will strike any and all websites that we deem to be in Israeli Cyberspace in retaliation for the mistreating of people in Gaza and other areas."

The Anonymous collective is a fragmented group that allows anyone to claim membership. Numerous attacks have been mounted using the Anonymous banner.

In the past Anonymous has launched politically motivated DDoS campaigns designed to protest things like the controversial Acta bill.