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Israel’s Ministry of Health website hit by cyberattack

After several hours, the website returned to full activity, the Ministry updated Monday.

By Aryeh Savir, TPS

The online site of Israel’s Ministry of Health came under a cyberattack on Sunday, the latest of a series of attacks on crucial infrastructure in the country.

The attack was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic, making it difficult or impossible to access the website.

The Ministry’s cyber and computer system blocked access from abroad, thus returning the site to normal operation in Israel. The Ministry’s databases were not compromised and personal details were not accessed.

After several hours, the website returned to full activity, the Ministry updated Monday.

Israel has been facing a growing number of attacks in the cyber realm in recent months.

Reuven Eliyahu, chief technology officer at the Ministry of Health, told the Knesset in November that Israel’s health system faces some 100,000 attacks on a monthly basis.

In December, the online site of the Bituach Leumi, Israel’s national social security agency, came under a cyberattack.

In October, the Iranian Black Shadow group hacked multiple Israeli sites.

Earlier that month, the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center’s computer system crashed after experiencing a ransom cyberattack. It took the hospital over a month to fully recover its systems.