s disrupt Israel airline, stock market sites

JERUSALEM (AP) — A network that claims to be based in Saudi Arabia paralyzed the websites of Israel's stock exchange and national airline on Monday, escalating an international cyber war that has jolted this security-obsessed country.Neither website contains sensitive information and trading and flights were not affected. But the ongoing salvos by s who use anti-Israel language in their posts has revled how vulnerable Israel is to cyber warfare, despite its sophistied computer security units in the military and advanced high-tech sector.
A security guard stands at the entrance of the national Israeli air carrier
El Al sales s in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Jan. 16, 2012.
s disrupted the websites of Israel's stock exchange and El Al on
Monday in a deepening cyber war launched rlier this month by a group
claiming to be Saudis. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)The attacks began rlier this month when s identifying themselves as group-xp, a known Saudi group, claimed on an Israeli website to have gained access to 400,000 Israeli credit card accounts. The group called it a "gift to the world for the New Yr" designed to "hurt the Zionist pocket."
Israeli authorities said 15,000 accounts were in that episode and credit card information about 6,000 other Israelis was disclosed online a few days later by the same network.
Last week, an Israeli identifying himself as a soldier in an Israeli lice unit retaliated by posting information online about hundreds of Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians and others.
On Monday, El Al Israel Airlines took down its website after OxOmar, who has been linked to the Saudi group, warned that both sites would be targeted by allied pro-Palestinian s, a person close to the company said. The source was not authorized to spk to the media and requested anonymity.
The company said in a statement that it was taking security msures to protect the website and that disruptions on the site were to be expected.
Orna Goren, a spokeswoman for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, said the site was overwhelmed by electronic requests that slowed it down dramatically but it was still operating. Trading was not affected, she said.
Cyber experts say Israel is a common target for online attackers who oppose the Jewish state and its policies toward the Palestinians, but there have been no confirmed reports of sensitive Israeli government sites being .
"Right now, we're not seeing anything that's especially interesting or especially dangerous," said Gadi Evron, former hd of Internet security for the Israeli government.
News of the led to a linguistic counterattack at Israel's state radio. Continuing its decades-long battle against the use of English words in its Hebrew broadcasts, the radio's linguist insisted that reporters use a Hebrew word, "patzchan," mning a person who something open, instd of "."
Source:The Associated Press