Arab hackers claimed responsibility Wednesday for a series of attacks on prominent Israeli websites, including that of daily newspaper Haaretz.

Cyber attacks against Israeli sites have been increasing since the start of the month, many of them claimed by Arab hackers.

In a Twitter message, the Palestinian wing of the global hacker collective Anonymous claimed responsibility for taking down Haaretz’s Hebrew-language site, which was still out of commission by late Wednesday.

The paper’s English section was also targeted but was up again by the afternoon.

Other victims included two Tel Aviv hospitals and the Israel Festival, a key cultural event in the Jewish state. On the festival’s homepage, slogans said “Free Palestine” and “Death to Israel” while Arab music played in the background.

Arab hackers have since the start of January targeted many sites including those of the Tel Aviv stock exchange, the national airline El Al and local firefighters.

Hackers also posted the details from tens of thousands of Israelis’ credit cards.

Israeli hackers have launched some counter attacks, though the Israeli government has asked them to show restraint.

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Data security firm Kroll Fraud Solutions has released the results of their 2012 Cyber Security Forecast. The company’s Cyber Security and Information Assurance Division examined the security issues encountered by their clients in 2011 and used those to predict the top ten trends they expected to see next year. One major problem across the board, according to a Kroll official, is that organizations often approach their data security in the belief that they will not be a target.

Small businesses were singled out in the report as a particular target of potential security threats. The report points out that while so-called “hacktivism” may garner a greater share of attention, the big threat comes from ordinary data thieves, who will likely target small businesses as the “path of least resistance.”

Often small business owners possess reams of valuable customer data, but lack the budget to properly secure it. This situation is complicated by the fact that small businesses also sometimes lack the funds to upgrade their data systems to the newest (and most secure) models or versions.

These two factors combine to make small businesses a ripe target for data thieves, who could use a variety of methods to gain access to valuable customer and financial data.

Russian leaders cry, “Cyber Attack”.

Recent pol results belie the idea of a Putin establishment.

Opposition parties complained of election irregularities in parts of the country spanning 9,000 km (5,600 miles) and a Western-financed electoral watchdog and two liberal media outlets said their sites had been shut down by hackers intent on silencing allegations of violations.

Sites belonging to the Ekho Moskvy radio station, online news portal Slon.ru and the watchdog Golos went down at around 8 a.m.

“Massive cyber attacks are taking place on the sites of Golos and the map showing violations,” Golos said on Twitter.

Medvedev has dismissed talk of electoral fraud.

This week’s arrest of six suspects linked to a two-year international cyber-crime investigation known as Operation Ghost Click is being heralded as one of the biggest cyber crime busts in history.

On Tuesday, authorities in the United States and Estonia shut down the scam, which over a three-year period infected more than 4 million computers with malware and generated at least $14 million in fraudulent advertising fees.

David Navetta, founder of the Information Law Group and an attorney who specializes in IT security and privacy, says the bust represents a significant victory for law enforcement. International law-enforcement cooperation is improving. A similar bust over the summer, which led to the take down of an underground crime ring in Ukraine, shut down a scheme that resulted in bank fraud losses that totaled $72 million over a three-year period.

“This is a significant victory for law enforcement, and they should be applauded for the time, effort and attention to detail that it must have taken to bring this crime ring down,” Navetta says.

“While this group was caught, how many other groups exist out there that will never get caught?” he asks. “The technical and legal complexities of these investigations and take downs are enormous, and while it is important to score victories like this, is it really making an impact?”

Vice Adm. John M. Richardson, commander of the submarine force, said he is struggling to come up with a name for the new era of undersea warfare, but “post-Cold War” just doesn’t do it.

He and other leaders of the submarine force say they are entering the next generation of warfare, marked by fewer resources, the proliferation of long-range, precise weapons and battles in cyberspace.

They will have fewer submarines at their disposal as the aging Los Angeles-class submarines retire more quickly than they are replaced in the fleet. The budget is shrinking as the entire federal government looks to cut spending.

At the same time, more nations and groups will have access to long-range weapons because the technology is getting cheaper, Richardson said, and they will increasingly use cyberspace to try to harm U.S. interests.

What China can do today with its weapons, Richardson said, “Hamas will be able to do in the very near future.”

This fall the submarine force will exercise its war plan in a maneuver they are calling “Agile Dagger,” to prepare in case all of the submarines need to get to sea quickly.

And Richardson said the submarine force is “starting to man the ship to fight in the cyber domain.”

More than 300 submariners changed their jobs to serve as information systems technicians, a new position on subs for experts in information assurance and networks.

Submarines will be needed for the fight in the cyber domain, and to make sure the military can get to places where adversaries try to deny access to surface ships and aircraft, Richardson said.

“It’s only going to get more complex,” Richardson said last week at the Naval Submarine League’s 29th Annual Symposium. “I don’t see a simplification of the security environment on the horizon.”

A computer virus has infected the U.S.-based control stations of Predator and Reaper drones, tracking every keystroke made by the pilots as they guide the vehicles on their missions.

The drones, which conduct reconnaissance and combat missions, continue to fly, according to an official interviewed by Reuters, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Something is going on, but it has not had any impact on the missions overseas,” the official said.

The military’s fleet of Predators and Reapers has evolved in capabilities, size and importance over the past decade, quickly moving from largely reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering aircraft to hunter-killers. Their use in targeting and killing suspected terrorists has been widely hailed by U.S. officials, though they’ve also spark controversy when strikes have led to the deaths of innocents.

Ralph Langner, a German cyber expert was among the first to analyze the Stuxnet virus that infiltrated Iranian nuclear facilities some months ago and identify its ability to target control systems. Langner, who is in Washington this week for a handful of events, including one Tuesday at the Broookings Institution, took some time to talk about the aftermath of Stuxnet.

He remains as concerned as ever that infrastructure in the United States, Europe and elsewhere is vulnerable to cyber attack. And he says it’s not going to take a sophisticated attacker or the resources of a nation-state to launch a strike that could have major economic and national security consequences.

“Let’s step back in history to Sept. 11, 2001. Let’s assume that somebody, a year later, said: “Well, you know what, nothing has happened so far. Do we really have to implement these hardened cockpit doors on all these airplanes?” Certainly, you’ve got to do this because the vulnerability is there. You don’t want to wait until some attacker actually figures it out.”

“The projection that I and others made after the discovery of Stuxnet was that, worst case, you would see copycat attacks within three months. Now, fortunately, this hasn’t happened. But something else did happen.”

Booz Allen has been hacked again and this time by a group calling itself, “AntiSec”.  The group appears to be affiliated with another larger umbrella organization call sign, “Anonymous”.

According to Booz Allen CEO and Chairman Ralph Shrader, “the cost of remediation and other activities directly associated with the attack will no have a material affect on our financial results.”

The attack was directed against Booz Allen’s government learning management system.  The company is “working very closely with our clients to understand the impact and mitigate any potential damage, and cooperating closely with law enforcement to prevent similar attacks in the future,” Shrader said.

The attack stole source code, email addresses, as well as other data.  What has been done with the information or what the goal of that attacker are is not yet known.

McAfee Incorporated has concluded that the recent cyber attack on South Korea is the work of the North Korean government.

The McAfee report describes the attack as a type of reconnaissance mission to see how quickly South Korea’s government detected the problem and recovered from it.    A detailed study of the attack and the computer code used in the 2009 and 2011 attacks show with 95 percent certainty that they were done by the same perpetrator.

The South has long been convinced of the guilt of the North Korean government.  The North’s Ministry of the Peoples Armed Forces has, not surprisingly, denied the attack.

The intrusion involved a denial of service.  A “bot” was inserted into the system which ran for 10 days and then self destructed.

According to the Wall Street Journal the pentagon will be releasing a document within the next few weeks outlining the case for war if and when the United States is hit with a cyber attack.

The paper is said to be a warning to would be attackers that any such attack will not go unchallenged.  “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” said an unidentified military official.

In 2008 a pentagon computer was hacked and just last weekend Lockheed Martin experienced an “infiltration” but played down the significance of the attack.