14 DAY TRIAL // Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters have initiated the sixth week of Operation Ababil 2, a campaign whose goal appears to be the removal of the Innocence of Muslims movie from YouTube.
In their latest statement, sent to Softpedia via email, they reveal the names of the ten United States financial institutions that they’ve been targeting for the past couple of weeks.
The list comprises Citigroup, Wells Fargo, HSBC North America, PNC, Capital One, Ally Financial, BB&T, SunTrust, Fifth Third Bancorp, and Zions Bancorporation.
As mentioned last week, the hacktivists have created an equation to determine the number of days for which they’ll continue to attack US banks if the controversial movie is not removed from the web.
According to the new calculations – considering that the number of views, likes and dislikes for each instance of the movie has changed – the distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks will continue for 166 days.
One noteworthy thing is that 166 days represents the number of days on which they’ll launch attacks. This means that the attacks will go on for around 13 months from now.
In the meantime, the US keeps accusing Iran of being behind the attacks. Intelligence officials say that there’s no doubt in their mind that the Middle Eastern country seeks revenge for the sanctions imposed by western states.
On the other hand, while they agree that the attacks don’t appear to be launched by amateurs, security experts haven’t been able to find a clear connection between Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters and Iran.
Furthermore, Iranian officials deny the accusations. They say that the US is simply using these attacks to discredit the country.
They’ve highlighted the fact that Iran has outlawed the use of computer malware and other hostile acts.