Hacktivist Activity Related to Gaza Conflict Dwindles

Hacktivist cyber activities around the Israel-Hamas conflict have significantly slowed, with some groups no longer plotting such attacks and others focusing on targets outside Israel.

Research of Dark Web discussions released this month by Security Scorecard found several hacktivist groups had made plans to conduct attacks or identified targets to be attacked, but many groups have since fallen silent or resorted to selling attack services.

A pro-Palestinian group, Dark Storm Team, posted claims in August 2023 on Dark Web forums that it would “attack Israel infrastructure,” and in early October, claimed to be preparing attacks against Israel’s European allies. However, as of Oct. 20, it had reverted to promoting its DDoS-as-a-service options.

Many hacktivist groups threatened to launch disruptive attacks against Israel and Palestine, while the hacktivist group SiegedSec claimed responsibility for a series of attacks against Israeli infrastructure and industrial control systems.

In addition, the Persian language-speaking, pro-Palestinian hacktivist channel Solomon’s Ring has not claimed an attack since Oct. 8. Despite being active since October 2022 and its claims of hacking and stealing data from an Israeli data center, there is no evidence of this nor of any leaks of that data.

KillNet Palestine (potentially a division of the Russian hacktivist group KillNet), meanwhile, has not posted any new content since a message announcing its formation on Oct 13.