Anti-Israel Hackers Strike Again by Attacking El Al and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Websites

Pro-Palestinian hackers continue to strike at Israeli websites, on Monday targeting the websites of the national airline El Al and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). The apparent leader of the group who calls himself 0xOmar warned Israeli journalists in advance of the attack.

In a Monday night interview, 0xOmar told Israel’s Channel 10 that he was working with a pro-Palestinian hacker group called “Nightmare” to take down the El Al and TASE websites. It is unclear where he is from, though he has identified himself as Saudi. Using a computer generated voice in a pre-prepared video, he said:

“This is the beginning of cyber war against Israel. You are not safe anymore…Let’s hack Israeli shopping websites. Let’s hack Israeli military websites and publish their sensitive and hidden information. Let’s destroy Israel in cyber world. It will come to real world also.”

0xOmar, who is spearheading the cyber assault on Israel, previously published some 20,000 Israeli credit card numbers.

Watch the interview from Channel 10 [note: report is in Hebrew while interview is in English]:

Ynet reported the stock exchange website was showing trade figures but did not allow any other action. Trading continued as usual since that is managed by an outside system. This was the image that the El Al website was loading Monday morning Israel time:

Ynet reported a pro-Israel hacker is also continuing he retaliatory strikes:

Pro-Israeli hacker Hannibal, who claims that he is a “Jew who lives somewhere in the world,” published early Monday the Facebook account details of some 20,000 Arab users. He also claimed to possess information that can be used to breach the bank accounts of some 10 million people in Iran and Saudi Arabia, vowing to cause billions of dollars in damage.

Ynet looked into Hannibal’s claims and confirmed that the details he published indeed allow for the unauthorized use of Facebook accounts.

Contrary to the recent cases which all seem to be individual actors, Hamas, which rules Gaza, weighed in, calling for an escalation of hacking against Israel.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri e-mailed a statement to Gaza-based reporters:

“Penetrating Israeli websites means opening a new field of resistance and the beginning of an electronic war against Israeli occupation.”

To counter the threat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in August set up a National Cyber Directorate and the IDF is assembling an elite team of computer hackers to protect key websites.