Israel Matzav

Saudi hackers claim to publish 400,000 Israelis' credit card details online; UPDATE: Some non-Israelis too

Saudi hackers claim to have posted the personal credit information of 400,000 Israelis online. While there is some element of truth to the boast, the number is exaggerated.

They called on surfers to use the details in order to purchase goods online. "It will be so fun to see 400,000 Israelis stand in line outside banks and offices of credit card companies to complain that their cards had been stolen. To see banks shred 400,000 cards and reissue them. To see that Israeli cards are not accepted around the world, like the Nigerian cards," the hackers wrote.

The hackers, who called the cyber attack a "gift to the world for the new year," broke into the "ONE" sports website and announced they had leaked the information. They also attached a link to a webpage from which the data could be downloaded.

The Bank of Israel has announced that the reported Saudi theft of Israeli credit card numbers is under investigation.

An Israeli student claimed that the files released by the Saudi hackers contained only 18,000 unique entries, not 400,000 as the hackers claimed. The files allegedly contained credit card information, including security numbers which allow credit card holders to purchase goods online, as well as phone numbers and addresses.

Ofer Schwartz, a mathematics and computer science major at the Technion, found that while the files do contain 400,000 entries, many of them are repeated several times.

Most of the Israelis whose names appeared in the leaked files confirmed they contained their actual addresses and phone numbers, but the majority said the credit card details were false. A few said the credit card details were accurate but that their cards had already expired.

The list includes many Israeli celebrities, including athletes and cultural figures. A number of them told Ynet the leaked credit card numbers were not theirs.

The file was eventually removed from the Internet. "ONE" said its computer experts neutralized the cyber attack "within minutes."

That might explain why I cannot find the list anywhere to see if I am on it (I have never bought anything from ONE). The website on which the list was posted is here. The original post from the hacker is here. The key lines are:

57 57 Israeli Data Leak File:

58 58 http://www.multiupload.com/OM1S9YLZKV

59 59(30 MB compressed, 210 MB uncompressed)

But if you follow that link at line 58, it doesn't go anywhere.


An Israeli was able to dissect the list - his findings in Hebrew are here.

In any event, it doesn't sound like there are going to be 400,000 Israelis lined up to cancel their credit cards anytime soon.

UPDATE 10:33 AM

I hadn't had time to read that last link before, but if you're abroad, the last two items on the list may interest you.

One of the files is something called Judaism.txt and includes "details of 65 credit card holders, including personal and credit card details (all current). Most of these people are US residents and many have explicitly Jewish names. They do not include any Israeli residents. It may refer to people who made orders from this website (my speculation - not in the original).

The other is called tbldonate.htm and includes 1,616 names and credit card details of people who donated to https://www.schneersoncenter.org/ between March 7 and November 18, 2011.

Labels: computer problems, credit ratings, our friends the Saudis

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:44 AM