The Israel-Hamas war is likely to result in Australian organisations being targeted online by ideologically motivated threat actors, a leading cybersecurity organisation has warned.
CyberCX’s intelligence update on 10 October states that analysis of the activity of threat groups since Israel formally declared war on 8 October had noted at least 30 groups ideologically aligned with Russia, Ukraine, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh had shifted their messaging on social media.
Many groups that had previously been focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine had refocused on to the Israel-Hamas war in the past few days, CyberCX said.
“It is likely that pro-Russia groups already known to target AUNZ will use the conflict and political responses to it – including physical protests in Australia – as a pretext to increase their campaigns in AUNZ,” the analyst briefing noted.
Two of the groups flagged by CyberCX as mobilising in the current conflict include two that have targeted Australia in recent times, including one which allegedly brought down the Department of Home Affairs site for five hours last week. The pro-Russia Anonymous Sudan group, which had claimed responsibility for at least 24 distributed denial-of-service attacks on Australian companies had also mobilised in the current conflict.
CyberCX said the most likely response targeting Australia would continue to be DDoS attacks – flooding a site with traffic in a coordinated way in an attempt to make that service inaccessible. The risk would be higher for critical infrastructure services, including finance, energy, utilities or government, as well as those that have a presence in or partnership with Israel or the surrounding regions.
While the firm said there was a real chance that Australian and New Zealand organisations would be targeted in direct response to the government’s condemnation of Hamas in the next month, other regions would likely be a higher priority target in the near term.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that some groups, including several with ties to Russia, had begun attacking Israeli government and media websites since the conflict began. The cybersecurity director of the US National Security Agency, Rob Joyce, indicated earlier this week there had not been any major cyber-attacks arising from the war so far.
The group that claimed to take down the Home Affairs website last week said it was done in response to Australia’s continued support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
