Hacking group Anonymous has promised that Israel will 'feel fear tingling in their servers'

The group claims to have bought down websites belonging to several Israeli government bodies and leaked personal details from Israeli sites

An international branch of the hacker group Anonymous has started a ‘cyberwar’ against Israel, announcing this week that it had taken down several websites belonging to the Israeli government including that of the secret service agency Mossad.

The attacks, which have been announced by Twitter account @AnonymousGlobo, appear to have increased in frequency following the death of 22-year-old Tayeb Abu Shehada, a Palestinian protestor who was shot while wearing the group’s Guy Fawkes mask.

Earlier today @AnonmyousGlobo claimed to have leaked “personal details” from 70,000 users of an Israeli-hosted jobs site, and in the past week they have claimed to have taken down government sites including ones belonging to the Ministry of Justice and Bank of Israel.

These incidents have reportedly been distributed denial of service attacks - a temporary method that overwhelms sites by directing large amounts of traffic to them, with most of the web addresses reportedly taken offline by @AnonymousGlobo currently online at the time of writing.

According to an earlier report on #OpSaveGaza by Mother Jones, the attacks have been coordinated by hackers “largely from the Middle East, Asia, and South America” although Anonymous campaigns against Israel have been in place since at least 2012.

A spokesperson for the group told the site: "As a collective 'Anonymous' does not hate Israel, it hates that Israel's government is committing genocide & slaughtering unarmed people in Gaza to obtain more land at the border." In an earlier message posted by the group on 20 July, it promised that Israel would “feel fear tingling in their servers, and homes”.