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Saudi hackers plaster 14,000 credit card privates on web
Raid on Israeli sites exposes up to 400,000 punters
A Saudi Arabian hacking group claims it has leaked information on up to 400,000 Israelis, including names, addresses and credit card details.
The data dump follows a reported attack on Israeli websites and has already led to fraudulent use of the sensitive info. Credit card biz Isracard said it had issued 6,600 of the 14,000 cards revealed.
However Dov Kotler, chief exec of Isracard, a unit of Bank Hapoalim, said that much of the data is either "incorrect or invalid", Reuters reports. Only an unspecified percentage of the credit card details released were were actually valid. Even so the lifted data trove has been used to make a number of unauthorised internet purchases.
Kotler said Isracard has blocked transactions on cards that have been exposed, adding that anybody who suffered any losses as a result of the breach will be reimbursed. In the meantime the firm has set up an app on its website so that customers can find out if they are affected, a development that by itself suggests that a substantial number of people have been hit.
Israeli paper Haaretz reports that Israeli credit card companies say leaked list is repetitive and only includes the details of 14,000 Israelis. Much of the data came from a hack on popular sports website One.co.il, it adds.
The data dump was carried out by a member of group-xp, the self-described "largest Wahhabi hacker group of Saudi Arabia". In a statement accompanying the release, the group said it had already used the stolen credit cards to purchase computing resources, such as VPNs and renting cloud clusters. It released the data partly to put Israeli banks at the expense of issuing new credit cards and partly through a desire a make Israeli-issued credit cards more untrusted globally.
The statement links to a series of files that purport to offer details on 400,000 credit cards. One of these five files is marked "184 working fresh Israeli credit cards", a tacit admission by the hackers that data in the other files is outdated and therefore high on useless. Other uploaded files claim to offer personal information on more than 22,000 Israeli business people - names, addresses, phone numbers, passwords and so on. Another file purports to offer information on 500 people who donated to "Israeli Zionist Rabbis". ®