Cyber attack on Israeli sites considered terrorist operation, says Israeli official

The new year started with a number of data leaks made by Anonymous, and one leak by a hacker dubbed 0xOmar, who is allegedly part of the “largest Wahhabi hacker group of Saudi Arabia”, supposedly “sailing” under the Anonymous flag.

He has claimed that the group has managed to breach a number of servers of various Israeli sites and to extract names, addresses, Social Security numbers, phone numbers and credit card numbers (including expiration year, month and CVV) of some 400,000+ Israeli citizens, and has made public some of the information in two batches.

Israeli authorities have immediately launched an investigation into the matter and so far it seems that only some of the compromised accounts and credit cards were active.

According to ThreatPost, Israel’s data protection agency is heading the investigation and is likely to ask Interpol for help. The country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has made sure to state publicly that Israel will be considering cyber attacks such as this one as terrorist operations.

“Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action,” he said, but hasn’t elaborated on what that action would entail.

In the meantime, an Israeli blogger claims to have discovered the real-world identity of 0xOmar, who is supposedly a 19-year-old Saudi Arabian student living and working in Mexico.