Credit card details of 15,000 Israeli credit cards have been stolen by Saudi hackers. The hackers claimed that they were in possession of the details of 400,000 cards, but the Israeli credit card companies notified the Banking Supervision Department that the information was on a total of about 15,000 active cards. This equals about 0.25% of all Israeli credit cards.
The Israeli credit card companies have already blocked the use of the stolen cards overseas, and under a provision of a Bank of Israel directive that was published this morning, all customers are protected. According to announcements from the credit card companies, 6,600 of the stolen cards belong to Isracard Ltd., 4,000 to Leumi Card Ltd., and 3,000 to Israel Credit Cards-Cal Ltd. (ICC-Cal) (Visa).
The Bank of Israel stated, "The customers will not bear responsibility for fraudulent use of the cards as a result of the exposure of their details as noted above, in accordance with the instructions of the Debit Card Law. In any case, the Banking Supervision Department recommends that customers examine the charges on their credit card statement or at the websites of the credit card companies in order to identify transactions that they did not conduct. Any problem should be reported to the credit card companies as soon as possible."
In an interview with Gabi Gazit on 103 FM this morning, Isracard CEO Dov Kotler said, "We stayed up until 3:00 am checking the list of 400,000 credit cards. We found that 6,600 were indeed stolen, but only a few transactions were made using these cards during the night. The amount of money stolen was negligible, and we will fully reimburse any customers that have been affected."
The hacking of the ONE website has already been rectified and it is functioning normally. ONE CEO Udi Milner said, "One of our servers was broken into tonight. Our IT team identified the breach and neutralized it within minutes. The matter is being dealt with."
The Saudi hacker, who calls himself OxOmar, announced online that he succeeded in stealing information including names, addresses, id numbers, telephone numbers, and of course, credit card details including expiration dates and security numbers listed on the back of the card.
The hacking of the ONE website was carried out in order to publicize the theft of Israeli information and the download link. The ONE website does not store Israeli credit card details. Visitors to ONE's website are transferred to a free uncensored text hosting site called PasteBay which is where the information is located.
The hacker OxOmar, who is a member of a Wahhabi hacker group, says that he belongs to a Saudi Hackers Anonymous group, which has attacked many sites throughout the world in the last few years. "We hacked into many Israeli servers, and we extracted a lot of information," the hacker wrote in his message that he posted on PasteBay. "As a New Years present, we decided to give the world information about 400,000 Israelis," he wrote. According to the hacker, the file that he uploaded is just the first one.
He posted a message on the site claiming the group is targeting Zionists. “Our enjoyment?” he wrote, “is to see 400,000 Israelis standing in line to their banks and credit card companies and complaining their cards have been stolen. Seeing banks destroy 400,000 cards and issuing new ones. To see that Israeli cards are not respected around the world, just like the Nigerian credit cards.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 3, 2012
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