The success of the Cirebon Security Hackers Team, which is not widely known to the public because it ripped Israel apart in cyberspace, is still embedded in public memory.
This hacker group helps Palestinians carry out attacks on Israel through cyberspace. Unmitigated, it is suspected that one member of the Cirebon Securitu Hackers managed to hack into an Israeli-owned television channel and change it to the call to prayer, and also managed to hack a credit card issued by an Israeli bank.
Team Cirebon Security Hackers disrupted broadcasts on Israeli television channels on Tuesday (29/11/2016) evening to show the sound of the call to prayer, amid outrage over official moves to silence mosques in Israel and East Jerusalem.
Israel’s private Channel 2 was cut off for about 30 seconds, with pictures of the mosque being shown instead of the usual broadcast content. Channel 10 was also disrupted, with messages pointing to the recent massive forest fires that destroyed much of Israel as “divine retribution” for a bill that would have banned the call to prayer. “This is a takeover of the satellite that is broadcasting the broadcast,” Israel’s broadcasting authority said of the hack in a statement.
“We view this as severe and consider it an act of sabotage.”
The Hebrew subtitles on the screen read: “God is great / this is punishment from Allah / Fire burns the heart / Stopping the call to prayer is war against Allah.” Palestinians have been widely blamed for starting many of the fires, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the fires were the result of “terrorist arson”. However, police said Wednesday they had not determined, if anything, that the fire had been started deliberately. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, and tens of thousands of people in the northern West Bank were forced from their homes. After the fires, Israel’s education minister Naftali Bennett promised to provide a “larger” housing allotment in settlement areas deemed illegal under international law, after much of it was damaged by the fires. Several Palestinian commentators said the fires, dubbed by Israeli media as the “fire of the intifada” were “divine retribution” for the plan to silence calls to prayers.
In the eyes of cyber expert Pratama Persadha, the actions of the Cirebon Security Hacking Team which attacked Israel’s defenses are seen as a form of solidarity with Palestine as a fellow country with a Muslim population. It is said to be one of the warehouses of Indonesian human resources capable of making a positive contribution in the cyberwarfare era.
