For what may be the first time ever, a cyber attack has been met with direct and lethal force. On 5 May, the Israeli defence force announced on Twitter that following an ongoing cyber attack, its planes had bombed a Hamas cyber operations centre. The Tweet said laconically: “HamasCyberHQ.exe has been removed.”
Of course cyber attack facilities and personnel have been attacked by countries before. What makes this attack different is that the airstrike went in at almost the same time as the cyber attack was detected. The IDF has not revealed how many people were killed or how many civilian casualties were caused. Given the speed of their retaliation, this may have been an issue.