Islamist hackers target BB&T’s website
By Christopher Seward
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BB&T;’s website this week became the latest target of Islamist hackers who interrupted the websites of Capital One, SunTrust, and Regions Financial, the North Carolina-based bank acknowledged.
BB&T;’s customers had trouble accessing BBT.com on Wednesday after the “hacktivist” group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters launched its attack, according to Bankinfosecurity.com.
The denial-of-service attacks “burden the bank websites with heavy traffic volume that causes slow service for the sites or makes them completely unavailable,” according to thehackernews.com.
Similar attacks have crippled Capital One’s banking and corporate websites twice this month.
On Tuesday on the website Pastebin.com, the Islamist group said the attacks were in response to the YouTube movie “Innocence of Muslims,” which has triggered numerous violent protests because Muslims say it insults the Prophet Muhammed.
The film initially was blamed for attacks on U.S. embassies in Muslim countries, the worst of which left U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others dead in Libya on Sept. 11. The White House now acknowledges the Libyan attack was the result of terrorism.
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters calls the banking targets “properties of American-Zionist Capitalists. … This attack will continue till the Erasing of that nasty movie. Beware this attack can vary in type.”
But Mike Smith of Akamai Technologies, an Internet security company, told Bankinfosecurity.com that fraud appears to be the real reason.
“The attackers are looking for targets that have footprints on employees’ desktops so they can compromise those employees and get access to accounts,” Smith told Bankinfosecurity. “That’s the assumption we are operating under at this point.”
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was a Muslim leader who fought the British and French in the 1920s and 1930s and also is the name given to the military wing of Hamas.
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