Yesterday – Hackers shut down Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, El Al websites
Hackers shut down both the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) and El Al’s respective websites on Monday, one day after a hacker network threatened to carry out attacks on both sites.
The network, which goes by the name “nightmare group,” was able to cause severe problems for both sites. By 10 A.M., TASE's website was only partially functioning, while El Al’s website did not function at all.
Today – Israeli hackers bring down Saudi, UAE stock exchange websites
Israeli hackers brought down the websites of both the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) Monday, in the latest episode of a continuing cyber war between hackers in the two countries.
The Israeli hackers, who go by the name IDF-Team, were able to paralyze the Tadawul website, while causing significant delays to the ADX exchange site.
In the immediate future we will see more such reports.
This is not cyberwarefare but amateur stuff. Just simple syn flooding with freeware tools. Simple denial of service (DoS) attacks which can be defended against by syn cookies and various other measures any system administrator worth a good pay will know.
Despite the headlines it is usually technically impossible to say where the attacks are coming from. A lot of "false flag" action is used in such incidents.
The Internet is designed as a error tolerant but collaborative system. Partisan amateur attempts can't really hurt it. But when collaboration between the professionals running it breaks down and the domain name system or the big router traffic protocols like BGP get messed with, the Internet and those depending on its usage, will be in real trouble.
It is quite interesting that within the global war the U.S. now wages the side more dependent on the Internet and thereby more vulnerable is the "western" one. Given that there are serious asymmetric warfare possibilities in messing with the net the "west" should be careful to not set precedences in that realm.
The above includes four Wikipedia links. Wikipedia will shut down tomorrow to protest against the pending SOPA/PIPA regulation in Congress which would mess up the collaborative professional Internet management you depend on to read this. If you "want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone" you need to take action against such legislative measures.