Israel’s National Cyber Directorate announced Friday afternoon that it had identified and blocked several attacks on websites of Israeli banks. The directorate explained the attackers tried to overwhelm the sites and make them crash.

"Thanks to the banks' strong cyberdefenses, the websites continue to be live and operational, barring the occasional interruptions," noted a statement by the directorate, explaining that the attacks targeted the customer-facing pages of the banks’ website, not their internal core systems.

Earlier in the day, Ynet reported that websites of Leumi, Discount, Mizrahi-Tfahot, Mercantile and Jerusalem Banks as well as the website of the Israel Post were hit in a coordinated cyberattack. Some of the sites went offline for a shot period. N12 reported that the Israel Post was the victim of a Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which temporarily cut off access to the website. Later in the day, Ynet reported that three more banks were also targeted. DDos attacks do not steal data and are not considered very sophisticated.

A hacker group called "Anonymous Sudan" took responsibility for the attack.