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RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

This weekend, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched an airstrike at Hamas's Cyber HQ [wired.com] in an apparently first of its kind [securityaffairs.co] real-time physical response by a nation state targeting the source of a cyber attack (as far as we know).

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has launched a physical attack on Hamas in response to an alleged cyber attack. A strike launched by Israeli forces targeted a building in the Gaza Strip that was hosting Hamas cyber army.

The IDF adopted a hybrid approach, it first stopped the cyber attack carried out by Hamas, then once it [had] localized the source of the offensive launched an airstrike.

This is simultaneously an evolution in hybrid-warfare and a return to levels of physical violence in the conflict between Hamas and Israel that hasn't been seen for five years.

According to United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

“It looks pretty serious. Now the number is over 400 rockets that we can validate have been fired.

The United States has reserved the right to retaliate similarly against cyber attacks since 2011, but has not done so.

State-backed hacking and physical warfare have been on a slow but steady path toward convergence for about two decades, and both information security and warfare researchers say that it was only a matter of time before a nation launched a kinetic attack against enemy hackers. "When I joined the very first Cyber Command in April 1999, we were talking about that as a serious thing in case it was needed," says Jason Healey, a former staffer in the George W. Bush White House and current cyberconflict researcher at Columbia University. "I wouldn’t say we necessarily had plans for it, but we were thinking it through."

That's an expensive wrench [xkcd.com]

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