The Israel central bank under hack attack

Apr 30, 2008 12:05 GMT  ·  By

Bank of Israel was recently forced to shut down its website after having been attacked by hackers apparently coming from Algeria, the Jerusalem Post reports today. The website was taken offline on Friday because a hacker called "The Moorish" broke into the servers and modified the content of the page. Besides posting anti-Israel messages on the website, the attacker also deleted all the bank announcements posted since October 2007.

"Listen to me Jews - you are a nation whose fate has been decreed and sooner or later you will lose the war. The victory will come Inshallah, the Chechnya scenario will be repeated and we will kick you out. Millions of young Muslims are ready to die for the sake of Al-Quds that belongs to us," the message posted on the main page of the bank read according to the Jerusalem Post.

Al-Quds means Jerusalem in Arabic according to the same source, so it's obvious we're dealing with an anti-Israel hacker. The same source informs that the attack was possible due to a "severe security breach", but no important damages were made and clients' details remained untouched.

"There is a separation between the bank's information and content systems. It [the hacking] has no effect on the bank's internal system," Bank of Israel spokesman Yossi Sa'adon told the Jerusalem Post.

Back in the past, there were lots of similar breaches and every time, security companies were talking about weak security measures set up on administration computers. For instance, several schools and universities saw their computers hacked because students attempted to break into the systems in order to modify exam grades. Sure, the security system of a school cannot be compared with one belonging to a bank but as can be seen, both of them are weak enough to get hacked.