The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), today denounced cyberattacks from Israel that aimed to disrupt the American Muslim fundraising platform LaunchGood, which is hosting humanitarian aid campaigns for Gaza.
LaunchGood founder and CEO Chris Blauvelt tweeted that “hackers, most likely in Israel, launched a Distributed Denial of Service Attack on LaunchGood that sent over 1 billion requests to our website from bots to try and crash our servers.” He estimated that the cyberattacks prevented $300,000 worth of donations from reaching the people of Gaza who need them. LaunchGood was able to restore its full service within hours and no other functions were affected.
SEE: Chris Blauvelt’s Tweet
In a statement, CAIR Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said: “LaunchGood is a widely respected and impactful platform that has delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to people in need.
Launching cyberattacks to stop Americans from donating to help innocent men, women and children of Gaza is nothing short of pure evil. We condemn these attacks and the broader efforts by supporters of the far-right Israeli government to silence Muslim voices speaking out for the Palestinian people.”
CAIR’s mission is to protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslim