Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Saudi Hackers Hit Israel Banks

By Micah Halpern
I've Been Thinking:

A group of anonymous Saudi computer hackers claim that they have hacked Israeli credit cards and posted 400,000 of them on line. They say that the personal information of 400,000 Israelis through their credit cards, including expiration dates, are now public.

The hackers hope to create mass hysteria in Israel and have 400,000 people storm their bank's headquarters.

Upon closer investigation, a student of math and computers at the well respected Israeli university called Technion said the hacker's claim is mostly bogus.

Ofer Schwartz says that the hack was really only of 18,000 cards and that the same details were repeated over and over to come to 400,000 entries.

This entire story raises an important issue about credibility and hackers reports. Very often in the hacker world stories are embellished and hackers hyperbolize. The story becomes bigger in order to make a bigger impact. But even in the hacker world there are people who try to set the record straight and keep people honest.

18,000 is a bad hack and should never have happened. But it is not 400,000.

Micah@MicahHalpern.com
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