Omer Benjakob, Aaron Rabinowitz, and Ran Shimoni report:
One Friday morning in January, office telephones in the city hall of Modi’in Ilit fell silent. Employees who were in the building quickly realized that something unusual was happening. They were locked out of their computers, unable to access files and emails. The reason only became clear a few days later: a sophisticated cyberattack had taken over the city government’s computer network and shut it down.
The ultra-Orthodox settlement in the West Bank is large by Israeli standards, with a population of around 84,000. Residents seeking services were unable to reach the city government. Education, social services and other departments could not work or call each other; the main switchboard was down. “I came in the morning and everything crashed,” a senior city official told Haaretz. “We first tried to restore the system, but were told it would take time.” He says that for several days employees were told it was just a malfunction; the reason – a cyberattack – was kept from them, and even now they have been told almost nothing.
Read more at Haaretz.