John Hultquist, chief analyst for Mandiant Intelligence at Google Cloud, said that so far, no "coordinated cyber activity" has been identified, but attacks are expected to increase over time as the situation continues. He called out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) activity as a possible precursor to other types of political activity, naming Anonymous Sudan in particular as being active.
Information operations have twin definitions: They can refer to the collection of tactical information about an adversary, and/or the spread of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent.
On the latter front, Hultquist said two notable information operations campaigns have been identified so far.
- amplifying the stance that the initial attack on Oct. 7 was a failing by the Israeli government, which didn't seem to be aware of the incoming attacks.
- Claim that Israel was humiliated by a small force, and that this exposed the weakness of one of the most advanced military superpowers, and that Israeli soldiers are now afraid of Hamas
- Iran, which he said is "promoting narratives related to the crisis." In particular, this has involved Iranian posing as Egyptians to stir up historical hostilities in influence campaigns.
- In previous influence instances, groups have leveraged networks of inauthentic news sites and clusters of associated accounts across multiple social media platforms to promote political narratives in line with Iranian interests, including anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian themes.
A religious hacktivist group known as Anonymous Sudan has claimed responsibility for the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that took down the personal website of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the hijacking of his Facebook account.
What to expect next
e also said that he expects to see activity designed to look like financially motivated cybercrime, including extortion-based ransomware deployments where no money is collected, just a threat is made around data exfiltration and leaking.
10/13 Darkreading
https://www.csis.org/analysis/understanding-hamass-and-hezbollahs-uses-information-technology
https://www.csis.org
