Israel reports cyber attack from China

The Israeli security establishment says it has thwarted a cyber attack and an attempt at industrial espionage originating in China, the regime's Channel 2 News reported Sunday.

Several weeks ago, some 140 senior figures across Israel’s leading security and defense industries received an email from a known German company in the field which turned out to contain a Trojan-horse virus, a form of malware instructed to copy information back to the source.

The recipients included project managers and supervisors of highly sensitive, and even classified, projects.

The industries’ various defense systems identified the threat and shut it down, Channel 2 reported.

An initial investigation uncovered the large number of people targeted in the field, while an additional check revealed that the sources of the threat were Chinese defense industries.

Operating procedures across the industries have been clarified to prevent any such incidents in the future, according to the report.

Earlier Sunday, an Associated Press report revealed a month ago, a major artery in Israel’s national road network in the northern city of Haifa suffered a cyber-attack, knocking key operations out of commission two days in a row and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

One expert, speaking on condition of anonymity because the breach of security was a classified matter, said a Trojan-horse attack targeted the security camera apparatus in the Carmel tunnels toll road on September 8.

The attack caused an immediate 20-minute lockdown of the roadway.

The next day, the expert said, it shut down the roadway again during morning rush hour.

It remained shut for eight hours, causing massive congestion.

The expert said investigators believe the attack was the work of unknown, sophisticated hackers, similar to the Anonymous hacking group that led attacks on Israeli websites in April.