al-Qassam Cyber Fighters to Resume Attacks Against US Banks on March 5

Last week, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters warned that they would be resuming the attacks against US banks if the remaining copies of the Innocence of Muslims movie were not removed from the web.

In a statement sent via email to Softpedia, the hacktivists issue a final warning, threatening to resume Operation Ababil on March 5.

“We, the Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, had previously warned multiple times that, if the insulting movies not be removed from the Internet we will resume the Operation Ababil. But, in spite of all of the warnings this suitable opportunity was not used and the insulting films to the great prophet of Islam (pbuh) weren't removed from YouTube,” they said.

“This is the last al-Qassam's ultimatum to U.S. government, and, we announce that if the insulting films are not removed in the following days the Operation Ababil will be started again next week, March 5, 2013.”

To prove that they’re serious, on Monday, the hackers launched distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against the websites of several US financial institutions, including PNC, Capital One, Bank of America, Comerica, Fifth Third Bank, Citizens Bank, Patelco Credit Union, Union Bank, and University Federal Credit Union.

SiteDown.co showed that the websites of many of these organizations had suffered temporary outages on Monday.

The hacktivists say they will apply the old equation to determine for how long the attacks will last. However, considering that the main copy of the film has been removed, the period has dropped from 54 to 11 weeks.

It’s also worth noting that just before they halted the attacks, the hackers attempted to disrupt around two dozen websites belonging to financial organizations from the United States.