Israeli hackers bring down Arab monetary sites

'Israel Defenders' hackers post in forum that attacks are response to "lame" Saudi attack on Israelis.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Saudi traders stocks 311 (photo credit: STR New / Reuters)
Saudi traders stocks 311
(photo credit: STR New / Reuters)
Israeli hackers said they brought down the official websites of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on Tuesday in retaliation for a denial of service attack on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange the previous day.
Both websites appeared to be offline following the announcement by the hackers.
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An Israeli hacker told The Jerusalem Post that members of the Internet group Israel Defenders were behind the attack.
They said in a forum message that they acted “because lame hackers from Saudi Arabia decided to launch an attack against Israeli sites,” noting the denial of service attacks against TASE and El Al, as well as three Israeli banks on Monday. They signed their message with the name “IDF Team.” The hackers warned “this is only the beginning,” saying “there may be disruption to the [Saudi] government’s stock exchange site” as well.
“If the lame attacks from Saudi Arabia will continue, we will move to the next level, which will disable these sites longer term,” they said, adding that the damage could last for weeks or even months.
Also Tuesday, an Israeli hacker named “Anonymous 972” published the e-mail details, including passwords, of 89 Saudi university students.
“Usually we do not like to hurt innocent sites, but there is now a cyber war, and every war has victims,” the hacker wrote.
“Every time an Israeli site get[s] hacked, the same thing will happen to Saudi sites.”
A pro-Israeli hacker named Hannibal published the details of 30,000 Facebook account holders from Muslim countries. He said he could publish 10 million bank details and four million credit card companies belonging to Arab citizens if web attacks on Israel continued. On Monday, 0xOmar, the hacker who claims to be from Saudi Arabia, and who has been behind a wave of Internet attacks on Israeli sites, told the Post he did not take the threat of a retaliatory strike by a network of Israeli hackers seriously.
“No one from my country would suffer!” he said in an email.
0xOmar said he would continue to organize cyber attacks on Israeli sites until the government apologized for what he described as a “genocide against Palestine.”