On the occasion of Israeli Cyber Defense Week, the National Cyber Directorate and the IDF conducted an extensive phishing exercise among IDF service members today, aimed at raising awareness of cyber threats. As part of the exercise, IDF soldiers regularly received text messages sent from IIDF with a phishing message about a new application that the IDF was supposedly launching, with a link that appeared to be unofficial. Those who clicked on the link arrived at a landing page that informed them that it was an exercise and included recommendations for identifying these types of messages.

The data shows that as of 1:00 PM Sunday, the percentage of clicks on the fake link was about 12% of all recipients of the messages in the IDF – about 200,000 people. This is an improvement compared to previous exercises, when the click rate was 20%. Some of the recipients of the messages even showed alertness and reported to the 119 hotline of the National Cyber Directorate or warned others not to click on the link.

During the war, the enemy’s efforts to attack IDF soldiers through phishing messages and social engineering increased. Also, in the past year, the National Cyber Command identified a significant 80% increase in phishing infrastructures reported and handled by the command.

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