The Israel National Cyber Directorate on Monday named Iran and Hezbollah as responsible for the cyberattack last month against Safed’s Ziv Medical Center. The directorate said that the goal was not only to obstruct the hospital’s operations, but to damage Israel’s general resilience mid-war, particularly while hospitals are overloaded with patients
The INCD identified the hacker group as AGRIUS, which is connected to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, and which used Lebanese Cedar, a group linked to Hezbollah. Mohammed Ali Marai was identified as the lead operator for the Hezbollah hacking group.
The hack was partially successful; Hackers succeeded in breaking into the hospital’s information systems to access patients’ sensitive, personal details, and then they released this data online.
However, the hospital and INCD succeeded in blocking the hackers from interfering with the hospital’s general operations.
Although there was a temporary period in which the hospital disconnected from many of its electronic services, relying on traditional backup systems for keeping ongoing records instead, none of the healthcare facility’s actual medical equipment was compromised at any point.