HADERA, Israel — When Israel’s military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country might face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyberattack could one day bring the nation to a standstill.
Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was not speaking empty words. Exactly one month before his address, a major artery in Israel’s national road network in the northern city of Haifa was shut down because of a cyberattack, cybersecurity experts tell The Associated Press, knocking key operations out of commission two days in a row and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
One expert, speaking on condition of anonymity because the breach of security was a classified matter, said a Trojan horse attack targeted the security camera system in the Carmel Tunnels toll road on Sept. 8. A Trojan horse is a malicious computer program that users unknowingly install that can give hackers complete control over their systems.
The attack caused an immediate 20-minute lockdown of the roadway. The next day, the expert said, it shut down the roadway again during morning rush hour. It remained shut for eight hours, causing massive congestion.
The expert said investigators believe the attack was the work of unknown, sophisticated hackers, similar to the Anonymous hacking group that led attacks on Israeli websites in April. He said investigators determined it was not sophisticated enough to be the work of an enemy government like Iran.
The expert said Israel’s National Cyber Bureau, a two-year-old classified body that reports to the prime minister, was aware of the incident. The bureau declined comment, while Carmelton, the company that oversees the toll road, blamed a “communication glitch” for the mishap.
While Israel is a frequent target of hackers, the tunnel is the most high-profile landmark known to have been attacked. It is a major thoroughfare for Israel’s third-largest city, and the city is looking to turn the tunnel into a public shelter in case of emergency, highlighting its importance.
The incident is exactly the type of scenario that Gantz described in his recent address. He said Israel’s future battles might begin with “a cyberattack on websites which provide daily services to the citizens of Israel. Traffic lights could stop working, the banks could be shut down,” he said.
There have been cases of traffic tampering before. In 2005, the United States outlawed the unauthorized use of traffic override devices installed in many police cars and ambulances after unscrupulous drivers started using them to turn lights from red to green. In 2008, two Los Angeles traffic engineers pleaded guilty to breaking into the city’s signal system and deliberately snarling traffic as part of a labor dispute.
Oren David, a manager at international security firm RSA’s anti-fraud unit, said although he didn’t know details about the tunnel incident, this kind of attack “is the hallmark of a new era.”
“Most of these systems are automated, especially as far as security is concerned. … They’re automated and they’re remotely controlled, either over the Internet or otherwise, so they’re vulnerable to cyberattack,” he said. Israel, he added, is “among the top-targeted countries.”
In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas have targeted Israel’s “essential systems,” including its water system, electric grid, trains and banks.
“Every sphere of civilian economic life, let’s not even talk about our security, is a potential or actual cyberattack target,” Netanyahu said at the time.
During Israel’s military offensive on the Gaza Strip last year, tens of millions of website attacks took place, from denial of service attacks, which cripple websites by overloading them with traffic, to more sophisticated attempts to steal passwords, said Ofir Ben Avi, head of the government’s website division.
Under constant threat, Israel has emerged as a world leader in cybersecurity, with murky military units developing much of the technology. Last year, the military formed its first cyberdefense unit.
Israeli cybersecurity experts say Iran and other hostile entities have successfully hacked into Israeli servers this year, and that Israel has quietly permitted those attacks to occur in order to track the hackers and feed them false intelligence.
