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Hackers are hitting Israel's energy sector with a 'severe cyber attack'

Israel's Electricity Authority has been under a "sever cyberattack" since Monday, according to the country's energy minister.

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Yuval Steinitz told The Times of Israel a virus had been identified in the energy department, and software that was already in place was working to neutralize it. Though the suspects behind this attack are still unknown, the attack on critical infrastructure comes just one month after hackers caused the first power blackout ever, in Ukraine.

Computer hacker
REUTERS / Samantha Sais

There was no loss of power in Israel's case, however. A blog post at the cybersecurity research SANS Institute explained that the virus apparently only affected ministry networks, not electric company or distribution sites.

“We had to paralyze many of the computers of the Israeli Electricity Authority," Steinitz told The Times. "We are handling the situation and I hope that soon, this very serious event will be over … but as of now, computer systems are still not working as they should.”

YNet News reported Wednesday that the virus was delivered to Electric Authority over email. Once a user opened the file, it was spread over other computers on the network. The malware is "ransomware" — software that prevents access or disables computers that asks for money in exchange for a user to regain control.

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The type of attack mirrors the one that took place in December, in that it used a "phishing" email designed to trick people into performing a task or give up information. Cyberattacks of this nature are quite common: Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro found a staggering 91% of targeted attacks involved spear-phishing emails, or emails that contained specifics on the person targeted.

"One of the things I find quite ironic is that we’ve been seeing this sort of script play out again and again. We’re still dealing with a very similar issue with sort of catastrophic consequences," PhishMe CEO Rohyt Belani told Tech Insider earlier this month.

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