[Foreign Policy] Israeli armed forces responded to a Hamas cyberattack by bombing the group’s hacking headquarters.With an airstrike on Sunday, the Israeli military provided a glimpse of the future of warfare.
After blocking a cyberattack that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said was launched by operatives working on behalf of the militant group Hamas, the IDF carried out an airstrike in Gaza targeting the building in which the hackers worked, partially destroying it. The strike appears to be the first time that a nation’s military has responded in real time to a cyberattack with physical force.
In a tweet, the IDF declared victory, saying: "We thwarted an attempted Hamas cyber offensive against Israeli targets. Following our successful cyber defensive operation, we targeted a building where the Hamas cyber operatives work."
"HamasCyberHQ.exe has been removed," the tweet added, in what appears to have been a macabre attempt at a joke using an invented file name.
For years, countries have used policy documents and strategy white papers to warn that they reserved the right to choose the method by which they respond to cyberattacks, either in kind through cyberspace or with physical force, said Catherine Lotrionte, an expert on international law and a professor at Georgetown University. Now, Israel has made those warnings concrete.
"You’ve got a physical operation against a building that was in response to an ongoing cyberattack or at least a cyberattack that Hamas was planning‐that’s the interesting part," Lotrionte said.
Key questions remain about the Israeli operation, and IDF officials declined to answer questions from Foreign Policy about the nature of the attack launched by Hamas against Israel.