The infidel attack on Hillel Yaffe Hospital in Hadera, which damaged the institution's computer systems and forced the management to switch to alternative systems in order to maintain adequate treatment for the hospitalized, revealed to us a new world of threats.
The new attacks are not only about obtaining information or causing damage to information, but they can harm life-saving systems such as respirators, oxygen and storage machines and other systems, any intrusion into which is potentially life-threatening.
In a similar attack in the past year, a German citizen who came to a hospital in the city of Düsseldorf for emergency treatment died, but the staff there could not receive it after the hospital's computer systems crashed due to a cyber attack.
In the US a lawsuit was filed against a hospital by a young woman who claimed that her baby, born in distress, did not receive proper care because at that time the hospital's computer systems were partially disabled due to a ransom attack. As a result, the baby's condition deteriorated and he died after several Days.
A ransomware attack, as opposed to a "normal" cyberattack, occurs when the attacker seeks financial gain from the course of the attack. At the level of principle, there is no ideology, policy or political position behind it that the attacker and the group from which he comes to change or stop.
On the other hand, in the case of attacks against Israeli organizations, we have already seen that they can have several targets at the same time. A good example of this is the attack on the student database at Bar-Ilan University, which requires ransom to be stopped - but it was carried out by an Iranian cyber group, at least according to expert estimates.
Israel has also been suspected in the past of carrying out cyber attacks aimed, according to foreign publications, mainly at Iran.
In July, the train system of the Islamic Republic was attacked during which the information screens at the various stations were disrupted, and in some cases a text message appeared on them with a reference to the phone number of Iranian leader Khamenei.
Shortly after this attack, another attack on workplaces in the Iranian Ministry of Transport began.
Cyber experts in Israel and around the world agree on the fact that we will see continuity in the trend of digital attacks, whether as heretical attacks or as interpowering weapons.
Those attackers will accumulate over time more and more courage and daring.
Add to this formula the increase in computing capabilities and the improvement in operational knowledge among hostile elements, and you will get attacks that will be even more dangerous in the future.
