Sudanese hackers took down Israeli port websites: report

Sudanese hackers said they took down two Israeli port websites on Wednesday, according to media reports, amid talk of Israeli interference in the country.

Anonymous Sudan claimed to have attacked the websites for Haifa Port and the Israel Ports Developments and Assets Company (IPC), an organisation tasked with overseeing sea ports.

Israeli media said the technique used was 'distributed denial of service', referring to the flooding of websites with large volumes of requests they cannot handle.

The IPC site was down when The New Arab attempted to access it on Thursday afternoon, though Haifa Port's website was online.

The hackings come after Anonymous Sudan on Monday said it had brought the sites of the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency and National Insurance Institute (NII) offline, news website The Times of Israel reported.

The NII said its website hadn't been knocked offline but that there had been an attempted attack, while there was no public comment from Mossad. Both sites were operational on Thursday.

"Message to Israel, we do not want any mediation from you in Sudan, put all your mediation in your ass," Anonymous Sudan said in relation to the claimed Monday attacks.

Israel had reportedly proposed hosting rival Sudanese leaders for ceasefire talks amid deadly fighting in the African country between the army and Rapid Support Forces paramilitary.

The group successfully targeted the Israeli mail service and banks in April.

According to authorities, the attack was swiftly put down but two telecom companies and other bank sites were brought offline later.

The mail service's site was restored within minutes, according to the National Cyber Directorate, while Bank Mizrachi was offline for around 30 minutes.

There were only "occasional interruptions", said the cyber directorate.

There has been some suggestion Anonymous Sudan could be a "project" of a Russian hacker group.

Reuters contributed to this report.