Middle East cyber war escalates: Saudi hackers disrupt Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al , Israeli hackers bring down Arab monetary sites

(Eye) Pro-Palestinian computer hackers disrupted the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al, Israel's national carrier, on Monday, escalating a Middle East cyber war.

(Telegraph) The distributed denial-of-service attacks, which also targeted three Israeli banks, were the latest salvo in a month-long offensive between Arab and Jewish hackers determined to give the Middle East conflict an online dimension.
Monday's hacking incident caused the stock exchange's website to perform slowly, while El Al's online services were unavailable for more than an hour.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a group of hackers, claiming to be based in Saudi Arabia, which identifies itself by the name "Nightmare".
It came days after a rival Israeli hacking group called "Israel Defenders" published what it said were the credit card details of hundreds of Saudis. Nightmare had carried out a similar stunt after hacking an Israeli sports website.
The self-proclaimed head of Nightmare, who identifies himself as "0xOmar", boasted on the microblogging website Twitter that he would never be caught.
"No one is this world going to arrest me," he wrote. "It's impossible to find me and I'll keep attacking Israel. Just stay and watch."
Setting himself up against 0xOmar is "0xOmer", the leader of Israel Defenders, who says he is 17. 0xOmer says his counter-campaign has been joined by "7ukk1", allegedly a soldier in Israeli military intelligence. They claim they are poised to release the credit card details of 300,000 more Saudi nationals.
A second Jewish hacker, Hannibal, has joined the fray, publishing details to allow web users to break into the Facebook accounts of 20,000 Arab users. He claims to have the bank account details of 10 million Iranian and Saudi nationals, which he will release if Israel comes under further cyber-attack.
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'Israel Defenders' hackers post in forum that attacks are response to "lame" Saudi attack on Israelis.

(JPost) Israeli hackers said they brought down the official websites of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on Tuesday in retaliation for a denial of service attack on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange the previous day.
Both websites appeared to be offline following the announcement by the hackers.
An Israeli hacker told The Jerusalem Post that members of the Internet group Israel Defenders were behind the attack.
They said in a forum message that they acted “because lame hackers from Saudi Arabia decided to launch an attack against Israeli sites,” noting the denial of service attacks against TASE and El Al, as well as three Israeli banks on Monday. They signed their message with the name “IDF Team.” The hackers warned “this is only the beginning,” saying “there may be disruption to the [Saudi] government’s stock exchange site” as well.
“If the lame attacks from Saudi Arabia will continue, we will move to the next level, which will disable these sites longer term,” they said, adding that the damage could last for weeks or even months.
Also Tuesday, an Israeli hacker named “Anonymous 972” published the e-mail details, including passwords, of 89 Saudi university students.
“Usually we do not like to hurt innocent sites, but there is now a cyber war, and every war has victims,” the hacker wrote.
“Every time an Israeli site get[s] hacked, the same thing will happen to Saudi sites.”
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