On April 7, a hacking group, named as ‘Anonymous’, had called for a united attack on Israel. The operation was code-named ‘#OpIsrael’. Many Israeli websites run by corporations and government came under attack on that day. The attack happens every year on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day to disrupt Israeli cyberspace.
This year however it seems that the hackers on the other side, Israeli hacktivists, were also very active. They were busy in erasing the anonymity of the ‘Anonymous’ hacking group by identifying the members of the hacking group. “Buddhax”, an Israeli Elite Force (IEF) member and pro-Israel hacker, hijacked the webcams of the ‘#OpIsrael’ attackers and posted their photos taken from the webcams including screenshots, usernames and passwords, real names and other details on the IEF Facebook page in a Dropbox document according to the Times of Israel. In the report, Times of Israel writes:
While Anonymous hackers were attacking Israeli sites, Buddhax traced the IP addresses of some of the attackers and broke into at least 16 computers, taking screenshots, scraping computers for logins and passwords of online accounts and using their webcams to take photos of the hackers, Buddhax said. He sent a message to each hacker reading “Next time don’t take part in OpIsrael. We know who you are. We know where you are. Long live Israel!”
The sixteen members who have been detailed in the document are located in Switzerland, Malaysia, Indonesia, Portugal, Italy, Finland, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.
“DDOS attacks sand defacin g small sites are not hacking. I’m not too big of a hacker, but I’m good enough to expose you,” Buddhax wrote.Israeli Elite Force members also released a statement on Pastebin:
“Our original mission was to give pride back to the people of Israel, prove that defacements and such actions are ‘childish’ and we can always out smart those who ‘attack’ in the cyber realm. Since this task was clearly done, we move on to the future.”
Next year when ‘Anonymous’ will issue a call for a similar attack then they would like to ensure that they provide some guidelines to their hackers to protect their identity and one can be sure that putting a sticky note or a paper to cover the webcam will be included in the guidelines.
