A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

JNS.org – Multiple Israeli government websites that went offline on Monday evening were likely targeted in a large-scale cyber attack conducted by “Iranian-aligned hackers,” Ynet reported on Tuesday.

The report cited the Israel National Cyber Directorate as saying “the attack was aimed at government and non-security websites, and especially not at public computer systems as for now.”

“According to estimates, the websites were targeted by a DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack, which disrupts a website’s normal traffic by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic,” said the report.

Such “attacks are considered quite basic and don’t pose a risk of sensitive information leaking,” it stated.

The attack lasted for a little longer than an hour, and all websites were then back online, according to the report.

Beforehand, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shared an ominous message with the word “surprise” in Hebrew on its Instagram account.

On Sunday, the IRGC claimed responsibility for a dozen ballistic missiles that struck alleged Israeli “strategic centers” in Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional capital of Erbil, noted the report.

The IRGC vowed to avenge the deaths of two of its officers who were allegedly killed in an Israeli airstrike last week in Damascus.