Yeshiva Website Overcomes Cyberattack

Over the past weekend, the Yeshiva website faced a large-scale cyberattack. The attack began about an hour before Shabbat and intensified on Saturday night, after a pause during Shabbat—likely due to the attackers’ awareness of the nature of the site and its audience. The attack involved repeated attempts to disrupt the site’s operations, block access to lessons, Q&A sessions, and the extensive Torah content available online.

The site’s team of cyber experts identified the attacker as highly sophisticated, well funded, familiar with the website and its operations, capable of attacking other platforms, and timing a coordinated, unprecedented attack. The attack had characteristics of a targeted professional DDoS assault, intended to overload servers and crash systems. Immediately upon the beginning of the attack, the site’s security team and cyber experts took action using all technological tools at their disposal to block the attack and maintain normal site operations. By the grace of G-D, the site continued functioning smoothly without disruption.

We view this as an attempt to harm not just the website, but the heart of the Torah and educational work that Yeshiva website brings to the wider Jewish community in Israel and around the world. G-D willing—Torah learning will not cease, and the strength of our spirituality is greater than any technological attack.

Despite the attack, site visitors were still able to continue learning, watch lessons, and submit questions to the rabbis as they always do. The Yeshiva team notes that the systems have been significantly reinforced since the event, and the website is expected to withstand any future attempts even more effectively.

It is worth noting that the Yeshiva website is designed to handle very high traffic. For example, on Tisha B’Av, the site reached a peak of over 40,000 unique users per second, without causing slowdowns or delays in browsing or video streaming. Overall, 190,000 unique users accessed the site on that day alone.

To ensure the website can continue to meet technological challenges and bring Torah to the world, we appeal to you—our visitors and Torah learners—to take part in this effort. Your donation allows us to reinforce defenses even more, expand the reach of lessons, and

ensure that every Jew can connect to the world of Torah at the click of a button.
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