The Ministry of Education in Israel is charged with the entire oversight of public education in Israel, so this hack is no small feat. Nearly 80,000 elementary students frequent the site, as well as accumulating over 42 billion shekels annually. The AnonCoder hack team CoderSleet stated that the attack wasn’t malicious; that it was simply them doing their civic duty by testing the website’s code.
The team released a statement that said:
“You Has Been Hacked by CoderSleet Team
Don’t worry we just upload our page deface
We contribute to the development of protection
We are not hackers we are just security testers
The hacking is not crime is an art
Never give up and try again to protect you web site
We are here in order to achieve our dreams
We walk on the road alone
Our goal is clear
We do not care obstacles
We do not know despair
We do not know failure
Our spirits never die
We are codersleet we are league
Expect us and respect us”
The CoderSleet team even left their team names, so that other hackers could identify their efforts. Even on Windows 2012, the AnonCoder group shredded the Ministry’s website (The cache of the hacked page can be found here), showing how mistakes can be found in even the most prolific websites.
AnonCoders Activity Since Conception in 2015
AnonCoders has created a pretty prolific history for themselves. Their first attacks were levied against other major Israeli websites in protest of crimes that they believe were committed against the Palestine people (Muslims) on behalf of Israel. In February of the same year (2015) the hackers leveled French websites in opposition to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a magazine entitled “Charlie Hebdo Magazine.” They’ve also vandalized many websites in Europe and the United States (“Kentucky Republican Party’s website hacked by Anon Coders“).