Israel is investigating the possibility of a cyber attack on it after credit card payments were disrupted on Tuesday morning, according to the Israeli economic newspaper Globes.
According to the newspaper, the Israeli company Shva, which provides communications between various payment companies for credit card transactions, experienced interruptions and prevented payment operations.
The outages began at eight o’clock this morning (Israel time) after servers of foreign companies abroad providing payment services in Israel attempted to connect to the Shifa payments system, and encountered a failure in approving transactions in the credit card system.
The newspaper indicated that no electronic attack has yet been identified, and that the cause of the problem may be a malfunction in one of the foreign companies that provide payment services in Israel.
Suspension of activity
Shifa has currently suspended the activity of foreign companies related to credit cards, and the main payment activities (more than 80%) of the Israeli credit card companies “Isracard”, “Max” and “Cal” are operating normally. Payment company Verifone is also operating as usual.
Shifa Company is working to identify and repair the malfunction in external communication, according to the newspaper.
Local credit card companies process transactions at a rate of more than 5,000 per minute, and there may be disruptions to companies tracking transactions through service providers outside Israel.
The newspaper quoted Shifa as saying that it “identified and is dealing with the communication difficulties faced by service providers connected via the Internet from abroad to the payment system.”
Cyber attacks
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been facing many cyber attacks by hacker groups from different nationalities and countries who support the Palestinian cause.
Since the Al-Aqsa flood, Israel has been subjected to attacks by pirate groups from various countries around the world, some of which were painful blows to Israel. According to those groups, they did not receive any confirmation or denial from the Israeli government.
Among the most prominent groups that have declared attacks on Israeli websites and applications are Anonymous Algeria and AnonGhost.
Cyber attacks of unknown origin
In other attacks, two billboards in Tel Aviv were hacked by unknown hackers who were able to remove commercial advertisements and broadcast videos supporting the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and including anti-Israel slogans, and this continued for about 5 minutes. The hackers broadcast scenes of burning the Israeli flag and other scenes of the violent bombing taking place in the Gaza Strip, according to eyewitnesses.
Gil Messing from Check Point Software Technologies, a cybersecurity company, said that the largest cyberattack that harmed Israel was the attack on Ono Academic College a week ago, where a Jordanian group claimed responsibility for the attack and published data on 250,000 records of employees, students, and former students, which The college was forced to shut down its systems.
In general, more than 40 groups supporting the Palestinian cause are participating in the cyber war against Israel, and most of their attacks are manifested in denial of service, and the groups do not directly attack the infrastructure.
Between the escalation of attacks by hacker groups and the silence of Israeli organizations, rumors, theories, and questions abound about the validity of the hacks, with the need to point out the absence of any statement from an official body on this subject.
