masked hackers
masked hackersReuters

Pro-Palestinian Arab hackers broke into the Twitter account of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit on Thursday evening and nearly caused great panic when they posted a fake tweet regarding a rocket hitting the Dimona nuclear plant in southern Israel.

“#WARNING: Possible nuclear leak in the region after 2 rockets hit Dimona nuclear facility,” read the erroneous tweet, according to Channel 2 News.

The tweet was removed shortly afterwards and replaced by the hashtag #Longlive palestine.

The IDF later tweeted, “We apologize for the incorrect tweets. Our twitter account was compromised. We will combat terror on all fronts including the cyber dimension.”

Israelis have been the targets of hackers over the past several years. In 2012, a person who claimed to be a Saudi hacker published the credit card information of some 400,000 Israelis. It was later revealed that the number of charge card accounts that had been hacked is about 15,000.

Israeli hackers later “returned the favor” by publishing a list containing the names and credit card details of citizens of Saudi Arabia.

Experts have said that Israel faces roughly 100,000 cyber attacks on an average day. In times of war, the average number of daily attacks is roughly one million.

The Defense Ministry has established a special cyber warfare administration, which coordinates the efforts of security agencies and the Israeli defense industry in developing advanced systems to deal with cyber warfare.