Four of the five targets have already been attacked

Dec 21, 2012 07:02 GMT  ·  By

Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters continue their campaign whose main goal is to get the controversial Innocence of Muslims movie removed from the Web. Their latest targets are BB&T, US Bank and PNC.

Hilf-ol-Fozoul has monitored the downtimes and it reports that the website of US Bank was inaccessible in most parts of the world on December 19 at 10 PM (GMT+3).

Hilf-ol-Fozoul has also monitored the disruptions suffered by PNC and BT&T. The former was inaccessible on December 20 at 4 PM (GMT +3) and the latter on the same day at 8 PM (EU/Central time).

“As of 8:00am ET PNC systems began experiencing a high volume of internet traffic consistent with recent threats against U.S. banks,” PNC representative wrote on Twitter.

“Access may be intermittent throughout the day. We recommend you continue to attempt to connect. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Please be assured that the security of your accounts and restoring full access are our top priority,” they added.

Earlier this week, when they announced the start of week two of the second phase of Operation Ababil, they threatened that 5 major US banks would be targeted. So far, they’ve managed to temporarily disrupt the sites of Wells Fargo, US Bank, PNC and BB&T.

It remains to be seen which financial institution is their last target for this week.

In an interview we had with the al-Qassam Cyber Fighters a few weeks ago, we asked them whether they planned on focusing their efforts on other types of organizations if they ran out of targets.

“Informing to all and giving the voice of Muslims' protest has been our goal and we'll decide according to the circumstances,” they said at the time.

It appears that they’ve decided not to focus on other organizations. Instead, they keep re-attacking the old targets.

Experts say that cybercriminals might be leveraging the DDOS attacks launched by the hacktivists to cover up their fraud attempts.