Anonymous claims hack on Israeli nuclear facility

The hacktivist group ‘Anonymous’ has claimed a breach of Israel’s nuclear facility networks in Dimona as a protest against the war on Gaza.

In a post on X, the group claimed, “As we are not as like as the bloodthirsty Netanyahu and his terrorist army, we carried out the operation in such a way that no civilians were harmed.”

The hacktivists claimed to have stolen and published 7GB of documents, including thousands of PDF documents, emails, MS Excel and MS Word files, 28 zip archives, and PowerPoint presentations from the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center.

Reportedly, in another social media message, the decentralized hacktivist group said that it did “not intend to have a nuclear explosion, but this operation is dangerous, and anything might happen.”

This statement was accompanied by an animated video illustrating a nuclear detonation and a plea for the evacuation of the nearby city of Dimona and the town of Yeruham.

There is no evidence they have been able to breach the facilities’ operational network. As reported by JNS, Israeli cyber security experts are downplaying the attack, calling it an “exaggeration.” According to them, the hackers only succeeded in stealing unclassified documents.

Anonymous is known to conduct an annual coordinated DDoS attack campaign named ‘Opt Israel,’ which started back in 2013 and targets various institutions in Israel.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza started, hacktivists have actively supported both sides with a series of cyberattacks on governmental and media organizations and industrial control systems.

Last year, ten water controls in Israeli agricultural districts were knocked out by a cyberattack, resulting in temporary interruptions to irrigation systems in the targeted farms.

Later that year, a hacktivist group known as "Electronic Tiger Unit" shared a screenshot on its Telegram channel, claiming to have accessed the SCADA water regulatory systems.

The shared screenshots showed threat actors accessing "Aegis-II," a water control product designed to provide dependable regulation of cooling, boiler, and other water treatment.

Hacktivism is often limited to DDoS attacks to disrupt services and leak private documents, which has a limited impact in the long term. Taking over industrial control systems would pose higher risks.