Israel hit by 44m cyber attacks

The Israeli government admitted it had become the victim of a mass cyber-warfare campaign with millions of attempts to hack state websites since the start of its Gaza offensive last week.

Speaking ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting, Israeli finance minister Yuval Steinitz said the government was now waging war on “a second front — of cyber attacks against Israel”.

Steinitz said in just four days, Israel had “deflected 44 million cyber attacks on government websites. All the attacks were thwarted except for one, which targeted a specific website that was down for six or seven minutes.”