Winter crops most likely to be affected, such as potatoes, peas and carrots are being checked by farmers.
By Pesach Benson, TPS
Hackers over the weekend managed to disable dozens of irrigation systems in the northern Jordan Valley and Hula Valley.
The hackers targeted controllers which monitor the weather and other environmental conditions and sense when and how much to irrigate crops.
The hacked controllers displayed a message saying, “You Have been hacked, Down with Israel.”
According to the National Cyber Directorate and the Ministry of Agriculture, irrigation activity has returned to normal. Winter crops most likely to be affected, such as potatoes, peas and carrots are being checked by farmers.
Unitronics, the Israeli company that manufactures the water controllers, said in a statement, “The company’s controllers integrated into the systems attacked in this incident allow for rapid recovery and we acted quickly to assist customers and ensure the swift end of the incident. All of the company’s controllers include built-in cyber protection layers, at different levels and according to the needs of the customers.”
The Israel National Cyber Directorate, which is responsible for all aspects of cyber security in the civilian sphere, recently predicted that the attacks will continue through “Quds Day,” the last Friday of Ramadan which Iran instituted as a day of demonstrations against Israel.
Quds Day falls on April 14.
On Tuesday, the Israel Post announced it had proactively disabled a number of services ahead of the Passover holiday to deal with a cyberattack. Package deliveries, including registered mail, and payment services to government offices were shut down as a precaution and will be gradually reinstated.
The same day, a hacker group known as “Anonymous Sudan” launched a massive cyberattack on Israeli universities. The websites of Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University, The Weizmann Institute, Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, The Technion, Ben Gurion University, Ariel University and Reichman University were disrupted throughout Tuesday.
There are no indications that internal university networks were penetrated.