Israeli hackers decided this past weekend to retaliate in an unorganized fashion: On an Israeli hacking forum, personal details were revealed (including phone numbers) of users from an Arab website that was hacked by an Israeli. Another column on the screen that was hidden could have been credit card details of the users. In addition, a number of other Arab sites were hacked into over the weekend, apparently by Israelis.
In the meantime, Arab hackers have published a list of Israeli sites that they consider vulnerable to break-ins, and invited other hackers to hack into them. Security specialist Jacky Altel noticed this announcement on the Pastebin website. "If your website URL ends with the letters .il, then your information is not protected," hackers wrote in an announcement and said that data that appeared in the announcement was their proof. "All of this information was gathered in just 43 minutes from the moment that we turned on our laptop until the moment we posted it here on this site," they write.
Altel says, "They published a list of sites they identified as vulnerable to attack and to being taken over remotely, and they are asking that everyone combine their knowledge as a large group in an effort to harm Israel and its systems."
The hackers presented a long list of Israeli sites, including Bank Massad and Bank Otsar Ha-Hayal, as well as car rental agencies, and email services, which they apparently found through the website www.toplinks.co.il which displays links to select Israeli sites in Arabic.
The hackers did not reveal any information about these sites, except for a few sites (it's possible that they did so just to show that they had the capability). The login information of the "Krayot News" website manager was displayed. Apparently the hackers mistakenly thought that this was a major Israeli news site. Other information about users was published (including passwords) on the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Bar Ilan website, where hackers wrote, "The IDF will have a hard time navigating without Geography studies." In addition, dozens of user details from an unnamed dating website were revealed, including names, email addresses, passwords and details about each of the users.
Maglan Information Defense Technologies CEO Shai Blitzblau is not very worried about the Palestinians' publication. "We hear these types of threats day and night. In my opinion, this is a type of ping-pong between Israeli and Arab hackers, until a significant hacking occurs, such as of a bank website. This ping-pong between hackers is similar to the cyber activity we witnessed following the Marmara Flotilla affair. They hacked into our sites, so we hacked back into their sites."
The identity of the Arab hacker that published today's announcement is unknown, but it appears that he is not connected to Saudi hacker Omar, the hero of last week's credit card incident. According to the hacking history of today's hacker, who goes by the name "Johnnyfive" on the Pastebin site, it appears that he hacked into the Virtual Jerusalem website a few months ago and revealed its user list on the site.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 9, 2012
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