Israel Takes Police Computers Offline After Discovering Virus
Police computers in Israel were taken Thursday after a suspicious file was found circulating its network and full connectivity was not restored as of late Sunday night, the Times of Israel reports.
Roni Bachar, head of Israeli security firm Avnet, said the file was a virus in an interview with the website, adding the file was found late Wednesday night and may have been on police servers for as long as a week.
According to the story by David Shamah, Internet access has still been banned throughout the department.
Bachar said the virus might have been meant for data collection as he believes the virus is similar to other data-mining attacks his firm has dealt with in recent years, Shamah reports.
The virus was sent from a personal email address belonging to the Israeli Defence Force chief of general staff, raising suspicions immediately as he would likely not be using a personal address for official communications, the report said.
However, Shamah reports the virus used a .RAR attachment and numerous people opened it despite it being an unknown attachment.
Both Israel and Iran were recent targets of a Trojan horse attack that targeted infrastructure projects and financial institutions, among others.
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