Palestinian hackers suspected of cleverly attacking computers in Israel

For several days this month, hackers were able to take control over a computer within the Israeli Civil Administration, by sending an email message made to appear as though sent by the Israeli Security Agency. The hack was committed in conjunction with the hacking of 14 additional computers, of companies that provide services to the Israeli security establishment. The companies' computers were hacked into immediately following the death of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, using an email attachment regarding the former prime minister. The attachment, in fact, contained malicious code. Seculert, an Israeli information security company, suspects that Palestinian hackers are responsible for the attack, which bears some resemblance to past attacks launched from servers in the Gaza strip. The company's VP revealed that the computers were infiltrated by a Trojan horse named “Xtreme RAT”, but stressed that at this stage, it’s not clear what additional actions the hackers performed once they took remote control of the computers. The Israeli Ministry of Defense said it has no knowledge of such an attack, while the IDF spokesperson announced that the incident was under review, by the military's Computer Service Directorate. Source: ynet (In Hebrew, by: Reuters and Elior Levy).