After releasing 15,000 credit card numbers hacked from an Israeli website on Tuesday, the Saudi hacker known as 0xOmar has released 11,000 more today. He has threatened to release a further one million.
The hacker broke into a popular Israeli sports site, making off with hundreds of thousands of accounts’ worth of personal information, including some credit card numbers.
Of the numbers released, credit companies claim only a few hundred dollars was illegally spent before the cards were closed down, according to the Washington Post.
group-xp
On Tuesday, in a statement on the sports site, the hacker claimed to have stolen 400,000 identities. The message left on the sport site, according to CNN, included an introduction.
“Hi, it’s 0xOmarfrom group-xp, largest Wahhabi hacker group of Saudi Arabia. We are anonymous Saudi Arabian hackers. We decided to release first part of our data about Israel.”
Hacker News reported that his group claimed to be a part of the Anonymous hacking collective.
Yoram Hacohen, who heads up the Law, Information and Technology Authority at the Israeli Ministry of Justice, told CNN that “Israeli authorities have begun a criminal investigation, including a computer forensic probe to search for electronic evidence to try to locate the group.” He is more worried about identity theft than credit card fraud.
This week, Israeli security companies have taken this opportunity to speak to computer security overall in the country. According to Oren Levy, CEO of ZooZ:
“The core of the problem lies in the fact that payment information, such as credit cards, ID and phone numbers, and other information, is being processed and stored by tens of thousands of different merchants who aren’t equipped to handle the information. There is a real need to separate merchants from this critical private data.”
Is he or isn’t he?
Haaretz reported that a blogger named Amir Fedida claimed to have unmasked the blogger as Omar Habib, a student from the United Arab Emirates “works in a café, and studies computer science in at the ‘Hidalguense Cenhies’ in Mexico.”
In another report from the Jerusalem Post, the hacker denies he is anything other than what he claims, and says he’s too well hidden to be unmasked.
Cyber-attacks, both by governmental, and amateur, hacking teams, have become more and more part of the landscape of international relations in the last few years.
Read more ReadWriteWeb coverage of cyber-attacks.
Shekel photo from Ancient Art, Dome of the Rock photo by Allistair | additional information from Jonah Balfour
