Ahead of an anticipated large-scale cyber attack on April 7, government offices heightened preparedness Thursday, blocking emails from abroad through Tuesday and advising employees to abstain from opening emails for five days, Walla reported.
The decision to take extra measures followed a security appraisal of the cyber threat by pro-Palestinian hacktivists, in an operation dubbed OpIsrael 7 April 2014.
This is the second year that the anti-Israel hacker group known as Anonymous has organized the day-long hacking spree.
After last year’s April 7 attacks, Israeli officials maintained the attempts were largely unsuccessful, although the Education Ministry and Central Bureau of Statistics websites were down for hours.
The government has geared up this year amid fears that viruses could be sent to the state agencies, shutting down computers and compromising important data.
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A Facebook event page for the cyber-attack had close to 4,000 members listed as “attending” as of Thursday afternoon. One user posted a list of 161 targets, all of which end with the gov.il, on the page.
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