Rabat- A new report has revealed that Moroccan hackers were responsible for cyber-attacks on Israeli targets in 2013.
According to a report published by the Trend Micro company and whose content has been reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, hackers working primarily from Morocco, Gaza and Egypt were behind a series of attacks on Israeli government, military and infrastructure systems.
The attacks were mainly directed at sensitive Israeli targets, including the government, Israel Defense Forces (IDF), academia and infrastructure websites. The Cyber-attacks meant to collect information for the purpose of conducting further cyber-attacks in the future, the newspaper added.
The report, entitled Arid Viper, and compiled with cooperation from the U.S. Air Force, reveals that the Moroccan hackers and their counterparts from other Arab countries used contaminated emails in order to get harmful programs into Israeli organizations' computer networks.
The report said that the hackers used tactics, known as Spear Phishing, primarily against employees at Israeli companies. The hackers used the aforementioned tactic to send fake emails from the IDF's senior command to various officials within the Israeli Police and the Foreign Ministry.
The same source added that the emails sent by the hackers included two harmful files. The first one enabled the hackers to scan relevant information from networks' command and control systems, while the second file was a pornographic video clip that was meant to divert the target's attention from the harmful program.
The authors of the report have revealed that the attacks focused on research institutions as well as academia and infrastructure systems, adding that these attacks were not sophisticated and might suggest that the hackers were not very experienced.
They also said that it remains unclear if the hackers acted alone, or as part of a particular organization. . At the same time, it's possible that both attacks were carried out by Islamists that are associated on some level, the report added.
© Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The post Moroccan Hackers behind cyber-attacks on Israeli targets appeared first on Morocco World News.