Hackers down UAE, Saudi stock exchange sites

Shortly after hackers broke into the websites of Israel's stock exchange and El Al airline, an Israeli hacker group has gone after the Saudi Arabian government and United Arab Emirates stock exchange sites.

 

The self-proclaimed Israeli hackers calling themselves "IDF-Team" posted their claim on PasteBin to take down the Saudi sites, which were offline as of 4 a.m. Manila time.

 

"Because lame hackers from Saudi Arabia decided to launch an attack against Israeli sites such as the airport site 'EL-AL' and sites of Israeli banks, today, 01/17/12

Official stock exchange site of Saudi Arabia at the following address http://www.adx.ae not be available online and is only the beginning, in addition there may be disruption to the government’s stock exchange site at the following: http://www.sama.gov.sa/," they said.

 

They also hinted that if the "lame" attacks from Saudi Arabia will continue, they will "move to the next level" to disable these sites longer term.

 

Such disabling may come to "weeks or even months," they added.

 

Tech site The Next Web said the PasteBin post came a day after a warning was issued from a different account on PasteBin, where the hackers threatened to attack several Saudi Arabian and UAE-based banking, government, airlines and exchange sites.

 

It added the official Saudi Arabian government stock exchange site, Sama.gov.sa, remained inaccessible as of Wednesday morning (http://thenextweb.com/me/2012/01/17/israeli-hackers-take-down-uae-and-saudi-arabia-stock-exchange-sites/).

 

Earlier, Israel’s Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and airline El Al had their websites taken down hours after a threat from a Saudi hacker.

 

Visitors to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange as of 10:30 p.m. Monday (Manila time) would get an error message that the site was “too busy right now.”

 

“Please try again later. The site is too busy right now,” read the error message at the stock exchange website.

 

The Next Web said it is likely the site is continuing to suffer a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, even as access to El Al seems to have been restored.

 

But The Next Web added the hack did not appear to affect the actual business as trading did not seem interrupted due to the hack.

 

The Next Web noted ongoing cyber clashes between hackers from Israel and Saudi Arabia have revealed the credit card details of thousands of people, whether by Saudi Hacker, OxOmar or Israeli hacker OxOmer.

 

It also cited a report on The Jerusalem Post that the Saudi hacker OxOmar contacted them directly, warning of an impending attack.

 

He reportedly claimed he had joined forces with a hacking team known as “Nightmare,” which Ynet identifies as pro-Palestinian.

 

On the other hand, El Al’s statement about the attack referred specifically to OxOmar, saying that “a cyber war has been waged against the State of Israel for two weeks.”

 

It also said El Al is closely monitoring the activities of the Saudi hacker, and that they were working on securing the site.

 

Ynet adds that a pro-Israel hacker, referring to himself as Hannibal, is targeting Arab Facebook accounts, and has already released the log-in details of 20,0000 users.

 

A separate article on The Hacker News said OxOmar disrupted the websites of Israel’s stock exchange and national air carrier after leaking leaked private information about more than 400,000 Israelis last week.

 

But while it said El Al officials would not confirm or deny the incident was the work of hackers, it quoted a person familiar with the situation at El Al Israel Airlines as saying the carrier took down its website Monday after the alleged Saudi hacker network behind previous attacks warned that both sites would be targeted. — TJD, GMA News