Israeli sports websites hacked

The Israeli daily Israel Hayom reported that from Friday night until early Saturday morning, hackers targeted and took control of several major, high-traffic Israeli websites.

Websites belonging to prominent basketball teams, as well as the official site of Israel’s Premier League, were seized by the hackers, who altered the main pages to display both visual and textual political messages in support of Gaza.

At the top of the homepage on all these websites appeared the phrase “Time is running out” in multiple languages, including Hebrew, accompanied by an image of an hourglass. Beneath it, a message in Arabic read:

“We send this message from the heart of Gaza, from the heart of the resistance that knows no surrender — from a place that has borne pain yet insisted on rising again. The massacres you commit will not go unanswered. Rest assured, there will be a response. These actions have only one answer: resistance, arms, and steadfastness until the very end.”

One of the targeted websites belonged to the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team, one of Israel’s most popular sports clubs.

According to Israel Hayom, as of Saturday morning some of the affected websites were completely shut down and inaccessible to users, while others displayed blank white pages.

However, certain websites were still showing the hackers’ message, as site administrators had not yet been able to remove the image.

No individual or group has yet claimed responsibility for the hacking operation. However, based on the content of the posted message, it is likely that a group of hackers affiliated with a Palestinian resistance organization carried out the coordinated cyberattack, simultaneously breaching multiple sports websites to deliver their message to the sports audience.