AnonGhost, protesting Israeli policies toward Palestinians, urges its followers to vandalize and flood Israeli websites with traffic.
The group has released a list of Israeli online targets, including numerous government websites, on Internet forums used by the Anonymous Collective.
In allusion to previous such cyberattacks, the operation is titled OpIsrael Reborn. Ahead of the attack, the group released 165,000 listings of names, addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of Israelis early on Monday.
The information was likely obtained by hacking into an Israeli Web hosting site. It is yet unclear how updated this data is, or how many of the listings repeat themselves.
The group has called on members to vandalize Israeli websites or cause traffic that would prevent access to these sites. Both attack methods use automatic tools that do not require any programming skills.
AnonGhost's most recent known effort to initiate a cyberattack against Israeli sites took place in April, on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The hackers also sent a short message to former US President George W. Bush.
NTJ/BA