Iran cyber attacks against Israel surged after Gaza war started, Microsoft reports
After Oct. 7, Iranians shifted focus from US and UAE, as half their assaults in war’s first 9 months targeted Israeli firms; Tehran also ran social media influence campaigns
PARIS, France — Israel has become the top target of Iranian cyber attacks since the start of the Gaza war last year, while Tehran had focused primarily on the United States before the conflict, Microsoft said Tuesday.
“Following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Iran surged its cyber, influence, and cyber-enabled influence operations against Israel,” Microsoft said in an annual report, referring to the massive Hamas attack on Israel that opened the conflict.
“From October 7, 2023, to July 2024, nearly half of the Iranian operations Microsoft observed targeted Israeli companies,” said the Microsoft Digital Defense Report.
From July to October 2023, only 10 percent of Iranian cyber attacks had targeted Israel, while 35% aimed at American entities and 20% at the United Arab Emirates, according to the US software giant.
Since the war started, Iran has launched numerous social media operations with the aim of destabilizing Israel.
“Within two days of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Iran stood up several new influence operations,” Microsoft said.
An account called “Tears of War” impersonated Israeli activists critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of a crisis over scores of hostages taken by Hamas, according to the report.
An account called “KarMa,” created by an Iranian intelligence unit, claimed to represent Israelis calling for Netanyahu’s resignation.
Iran also began impersonating partners after the war started, Microsoft said.
Iranian services created a Telegram account using the logo of the military wing of Hamas to spread false messages about the hostages in Gaza and threaten Israelis, Microsoft said. It was not clear if Iran acted with Hamas’s consent, it added.
“Iranian groups also expanded their cyber-enabled influence operations beyond Israel, with a focus on undermining international political, military, and economic support for Israel’s military operations,” the report said.
In June, Israel’s cyber defense chief Gaby Portnoy warned that Iranian cyber aggression is “an international problem, not only an Israeli one, and therefore the solution needs to be international.”
Portnoy called for a joint international front not only in defense, but also for building a deterrence, and “charging together a price from Iran for the world damage they cause.”
The following month, the Israel Defense Forces reported that its cloud computing network had faced over three billion attacks since the war started.
Last month, several digital security experts told The Times of Israel that even if a ceasefire is reached in the war, Iranian cyber attacks will likely continue.
The fighting in Gaza has also brought the yearslong shadow war between Israel and Iran onto the open battlefield. Iran has launched two barrages of rockets directly at Israel as it battles against Iran’s proxy, the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon. The day after the Hamas attack, Hezbollah began attacking along Israel’s northern border.
The Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The thousands of terrorists who burst into the country also abducted 251 people who were taken as hostages to Gaza.
Israel responded with a military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza, prevent a similar devastating attack from the enclave in the future, and save the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
