The Anonymous Sudan hacker group has taken responsibility for a series of brief power outages reported in multiple Israeli cities on Thursday afternoon.
Outages were reported in Tel Aviv and the nearby cities of Bnei Brak, Elad, Jaffa, Lod, Rehovot and Petah Tikvah, as well as in Beer Sheva, Arad and Tiberias, according to TPS.
The internet was also reported to be down in the city of Arad, about 40 minutes east of Be’er Sheva, raising the question of whether hackers were behind the multi-city outage.
“Is darkness beautiful, Israel?” the hacker group mocked in a post on its Telegram messaging site. “Why don’t you have electricity? Is this attack good? Do you want more? Do you want to down the internet and communications?
“The electric attack was just for fun,” the group threatened. “We’ll show you more. We fully announce.. We are responsible for the electricity outages in Israel, and there will be an internet outage as well soon.”
However, the CEO of the Israel Electric Company, which controls electricity throughout the country, said in a brief statement, “The chance that the power outage was caused by a cyber attack is zero,” according to KAN News Reshet Bet radio.
Spokesperson Ayelet Braun said that a fault in one of the power generation units in Haifa caused the brief power outages in various parts of the country. “A repair is expected in a short period of time,” she added.
