In retaliation against Saudi Arabian hacker 0xOmar, who leaked the credit card details of 15 000 Israeli nationals and took down a secondary Tel Aviv stock exchange site last week, Israeli hackers calling themselves the #IDF-team have targeted stock exchanges in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates yesterday.

In a statement posted to Pastebin – with what I can only assume is Google Translate’s help – the Israeli hackers wrote:

“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 https://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: https://www.sama.gov.sa/
If the lame attacks from Saudi Arabia will continue, we will move to the next level which will disable these sites longer term may come to weeks or even months.
You have been warned.”

According to Haaretz – a source that should be taken with a fistful or two of salt – the Saudi Stock Exchange website was  “paralyzed,” and the UEA stock exchange site “significantly delayed” by the Israeli hackers.

The newspaper also describes an Israeli hacker going by ‘Hannibal’ as releasing a list of 30 000 Saudi email addressed and Facebook passwords, and threatening to release millions more addresses, passwords and bank account details if Israel should officially declare cyberwar. Because that’s something that nation states do, apparently.

[Source: TNW]