Iran and Israel are bitter foes. They recently traded cyber attacks against each other. In April, Iran attempted to hack into Israeli water supply that could have poisoned “hundreds of people.” Yigal Unna, the Head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, hinted last week that the attack may have aimed to mix chlorine or other chemicals into the water supply.” It came dangerously close to succeeding. “If the bad guys had succeeded in their plot we would be facing, in the middle of the corona crisis, very big damage to the civilian population and a lack of water and even worse than that,” Unna explained. His comments marked the first details of what happened of the exposing and countering the cyber attack. The Iranians have denied the attack.
The attack led to an alleged Israeli response on May 9, at the request of the outgoing defense minister Naftali Bennet, who would leave his position after the formation of the new government. The attack focused on Iran’s Shahid Rajaee port, an attack whose impact would be “economic, nobody would be placed at risk, they would be reminded that we are here, and that we are watching. The response was very small, like a knock on the door. Think of it as a gentle reminder. ‘We know where you live.”
Unna reminded that this is the beginning of the cyber operations, “the first time in modern history that an attack came on real life and not to IT or data. The attack happened and we prevented the damage, and that is our goal and our mission. And now we are in the middle of the preparation for the next phase, because it will come and come eventually.”
Thankfully, the attack failed. But officials don’t know exactly how it failed. David Ben-Gurion would remind a modern world, “That to live in Israel you have to believe in miracles.” Those who acknowledge and accept God’s oversight over the land and people of Israel know that it was Him who prevented the attack.
(Source: The Times of Israel)
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