In The Middle East, Credit Cards Are the New Weapon of Choice
About the only thing nice we can say about the latest Israeli-Palestine conflict is, well, at least they're not actually shooting at each other. Instead they're trying to ruin each other's credit ratings and deface 
each other's Facebook walls. Yes, it's war, but war as teenaged geeks fight it.
Recently, we told you about oxOmar, a hacker from the United Arab Emirates working and studying in Mexico who managed to breach two Israeli coupon sites and released about 14,000 account numbers. The Israeli government responded by saying that they were treating the attack as terrorism, and that they'd hunt down oxOmar. Meanwhile, in retaliation, a group of Israeli hackers stole and released 400 credit card numbers from Saudi Arabian citizens.
This being the Middle East, everybody sat down like a mature responsible adult and talked it out, while law enforcement on both sides calmly agreed to go after the criminals involved. Just kidding! Instead, it's gotten conflated with the wider political conflict, as hacking attacks have spread and grown men who should know better start getting involved and yelling at each other at length.
Fortunately, those with credit card numbers released are largely safe; the credit card companies involved acted quickly and with foresight, looking at the numbers and informing the account holders, and then taking action. The problem is really less with the numbers being released and more with the fact that this cyber slapfight is escalating, with more and more hackers from both sides jumping in to find and release the "other side's” personal data, and politicians refusing to do their jobs.
For example, an Israeli hacker calling himself "Hannibal", yes, after Hannibal Lecter (remember that we're dealing with teenagers here), found and uploaded the emails and password for 20,000 Arab Facebook accounts. In response to that, a group of Palestinian hackers temporarily took down the websites of El Al and the Israeli stock exchange with the encouragement of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip. This is basically the equivalent of your mayor urging on the local hoods as they smash windows and tear down posters over at the rival high school.
So far, the breaches have been unpleasant, but with few far-reaching real world consequences: mostly it's been a huge inconvenience to those just trying to live their lives. But as more people get involved, and more fly off the handle, the risk increases that something dangerous could happen. For example, some hackers have claimed they've breached manufacturing computers tied to parts of the Israeli government. So these attacks may escalate.
But, for now, they're the equivalent of teenagers committing vandalism and calling each other names: it may turn into something more dangerous, but it’s now more annoying than anything else. Hopefully, the governments in that part of the world will realize picking political fights with each other by backing the petty digital crimes of bored teenagers isn't the way to solve their problems.
Well, we hope.
Image Credit:
5-7-2012
by Chris Martin
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by Dan Seitz
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by Neil Hayashi
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