14 DAY TRIAL // Just before hacktivists launched OpUSA, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters announced that they were taking a short break. The break has been much longer than we expected, but now the hackers are back and they’re determined to resume their attacks against US financial institutions.
“Well, misters! The break's over and it's now time to pay off. After a chance given to banks to rest awhile, now the Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam will once again take hold of their destiny,” the hackers said in an email sent to Softpedia.
“As we have said earlier, the Operation Ababil is performed because of widespread and organized offends to Islamic spirituals and holy issues, especially the great prophet of Islam(PBUH) and if the offended film is eliminated from the Internet, the related attacks also will be stopped,” they added.
“While the films exist, no one should expect this operation be fully stopped. Planning the new phase will be a bit different and you'll feel this in the coming days.”
The Cyber Fighters say they will continue to use their formula to determine the number of days in which they will launch distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks.
According to their “invoice,” based on the number of views each instance of “Innocence of Muslims” has, the attacks will go on for a number of 25 days.
It’s uncertain at this point if they’ll launch the attacks on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as they have in the previous phases of Operation Ababil.
It’s worth noting that the botnet used by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters against United States financial institutions has been improved by the hackers. Experts say the Brobot botnet has been tweaked to make sure it can disrupt the websites of banks even if they’ve implemented additional protection mechanisms.
A couple of days ago, US Rep. Mike Rogers noted that the attacks of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters – which he believed were sponsored by Iran – had caused losses of $100,000 (€75,000) to a single bank.