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Islamic Hacker Group Resumes Attacks On Banks

Posted by timothy on from the washing-your-mouth-out-with-soap dept.

tsamsoniw writes "PNC, Bank of America, SunTrust, and other major financial institutions have experienced a wave of DDoS attacks and site outages over the past couple of days, and Islamic extremist hacker group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters is claiming responsibility. The group, which launched similar attacks earlier this year, reiterated its demands: that a controversial YouTube video mocking the prophet Mohammed "be eliminated from the Internet.""

52 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Its becoming clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Religion is a disease of the mind, its victims need treatment, not mocking or pity or hate

    1. Re:Its becoming clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Religion is a disease of the mind, its victims need treatment, not mocking or pity or hate

      But the mocking is so much fun!

    2. Re:Its becoming clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Religion is a disease of the mind, its victims need treatment

      It is not just religion, it is any kind of "us vs them" tribalism.

    3. Re:Its becoming clear by fustakrakich · · Score: 3

      It's not about 'religion'. It's about how easy it is to incite people into doing whatever you want them to. I present to you the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, all this is bullshit when you have Americans debating the merits of torture.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    4. Re:Its becoming clear by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is not just religion, it is any kind of "us vs them" tribalism.

      Just remember the "us vs them" is not always the result of tribalism. In this case the "them" are muslim political fundamentalists that will accept no other system in the globe except the Caliphate and Sharia. If you would rather keep your freedoms and the principles of the Englightenment then you fall into the "us" group. These are not "tribes" in the nationalistic sense (which perhaps was what you meant) - it is a fundamental battle of civilizations between those that seek to embrace all cultures, or those that believe that God commands that impose a particular political system be imposed around the globe (and which cannot be questioned). Islam is not alone in this singular view, it just happens to be the most active in it at the moment and is growing more and more active.

    5. Re:Its becoming clear by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Informative

      Lots of folks have diseases of the mind, but somehow manage to be only a minor annoyance or slight nuisance to others. Like the crazy lady who hurls cats at me.

      Others seem Hell-bent on trying to make their sickness impact my personal freedom and values of liberal democracy as greatly as possible on my front lawn.

      The Founding Fathers spoke of "Freedom of Religion," but they really meant "Freedom from Religion", of others, as well.

      Democracy, not Theocracy.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    6. Re:Its becoming clear by JDAustin · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Crusades.....you mean a defensive war waged against muslims by christians? Palastine was settled by christians and muslims came and took it over (ie, the muslims invaded).

    7. Re:Its becoming clear by milkmage · · Score: 3, Insightful

      religion is something people came up with to explain the unexplained. once we can explain stuff we're much better off (or at least feel more comfortable about it). think about the weird shit that's happened in the past.. all because we just "didn't know"

      we don't have witch hunts any more - because we can explain a lot of things which were construed as witchcraft at one time.
      we don't sacrifice humans anymore because that's not really going to appease the gods and grant us a bountiful harvest the next season.
      we don't name constellations anymore because we figured out.. they're just stars. ...discovering things using science is awesome, but as you said, religion will always be around because science can't explain things what really happens to our consciousness after we die.

    8. Re:Its becoming clear by JohnnyComeLately · · Score: 2

      I have no mod points, but I would use all of them for +1 "Funny" for the last sentence, "Muslims are the only ones you see because they're the rockstars of the religious nutjob world right now." Just goes to with the Inglorious Bastards quote, "You know how you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!" Islam has had centuries of practice and have permanent "Pro Cards," in the Super Bowl of crazies.

    9. Re:Its becoming clear by flyneye · · Score: 2

      This includes the religion of atheism.
      Religion can be anything from mild interest to obsession with any dogma right up to the Rocky Horror Picture Show or NASCAR.
      Money worship is the most popular religion in the world.
      Of course my tagline gives away my personal favorite. But where else can you get eternal salvation or triple your money back?
      Mocking? We are the pros!

      --
      *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
    10. Re:Its becoming clear by Guido+von+Guido+II · · Score: 2

      The Crusades.....you mean a defensive war waged against muslims by christians? Palastine was settled by christians and muslims came and took it over (ie, the muslims invaded).

      Seriously? The Muslim conquest was over three hundred years before the Crusades. And any military activity involving an invading army which is fought entirely outside of the countries where the invading armies came from is *clearly* defensive.

    11. Re:Its becoming clear by Psyborgue · · Score: 2

      Democracy can mean theocracy. Look at Egypt. The majority of the people want islam? What then, do you do in such a situation? Is democracy the ultimate ideal? I think not. It's fucking dangerous if the majority wishes to oppress the minority.

  2. Someone tell me by kc67 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why can't these financial institutions stop a DDOS? I am being serious. Why can't these be mitigated at a data center?

    1. Re:Someone tell me by Baloroth · · Score: 3

      You can (some sites have before), but doing so takes up resources and won't necessarily stop all the different attack vectors. DDoS can use multiple approaches aside from just flooding the server with requests. You can, in theory, protect against all the known attacks, but that requires time and money before the attack starts, which might be wasted if you never get attacked (you don't typically want 10x your expected maximum load worth of bandwidth just sitting around unless you absolutely need it, for example).

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    2. Re:Someone tell me by thoughtlover · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The real question is, why do these hackers think the banks are responsible for this video or have any way to even take it down --from the internet, much less. Yeah, good luck with that --right, reputation.com? And why does everyone call this a 'YouTube video', as if Google had something to do with funding its production? Does YouTube have a DDoS problem from this group, too?

      --
      No sig for you! Come back one year!
    3. Re:Someone tell me by operagost · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because these terrorists are ignoramuses from countries where control of everything is centralized in a dictator or a theocracy, so naturally they can't comprehend of a liberal democracy where this might not be the case.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    4. Re:Someone tell me by high_rolla · · Score: 2, Insightful

      My guess is that they feel if they can disrupt the services of banks it will in turn disrupt the functioning of many organisations that rely on those banks for financial services. This would have a negative effect on the economy as a whole (which is already in bad shape) and possibly get the attention of the government to do something to stop it.

      Now, I don't feel this is actually going to work like that but that is my best guess at what they were attempting.

      Or maybe they figured a lot of banks higher ups are friends with politicians whom they could go crying to to make it stop.

      --
      Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
    5. Re:Someone tell me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because the DDOS isn't coming from those say... 10 computers. It's coming from god knows how many computers in a botnet made up of computers from probably every country that has computers connected to the internet.

    6. Re:Someone tell me by SecurityTheatre · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I worked to help a company under DDOS attack mitigate the threat.

      Their normal bandwidth usage was on the order of 400Mbps, they has about 1Gbps of capacity. They were peered to several regional NOCs that maintained about 50Gbps of connectivity, I believe. Keep in mind that 50Gbps with multiple peers costs on the order of $400,000 per year, if my math is correct.

      Well, regardless, the DDoS attacks from a single individual (who was later identified) were pushing about 60Gbps (!?!) of attack bandwidth. They not only overwhelmed the provider and their small datacenter, but the upstream NOC as well. The other issue is that the DDoS attacks were coming from a huge number of endpoints, sometimes 100,000 or more, so it was not practical to simply blacklist all of their networks, especially since many were on cable modems, or other servers in major companies that had been infected with some botnet, or otherwise.

      On the whole, a major financial institution CAN mitigate these attacks. You should note that the Bank of America website is still up.

      However, I estimate it costs them in excess of $100,000 per month to do so.

    7. Re:Someone tell me by thoughtlover · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sorry bud, they know exactly what they want to destroy. Freedom. Because they don't have it. I still don't understand that tack, but they aren't 'ignoramuses'. How are they suddenly put down when they are 'fighting the power' when they DDoS a Western bank, yet vaulted to glory when they are savvy users of social media to coordinate the Arab Spring --or when they make a homemade tank that's controlled with a Playstation controller? Really, you frighten me with that blanket-statement regarding Arabs' mentality who reside in countries with a dictator or theocratic state. Most of them are still not free. The fact you're modded 4, Insightful makes me wary of the lot who gave you such a score, too. Especially when today's headlines on Slashdot read as such.

      --
      No sig for you! Come back one year!
    8. Re:Someone tell me by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

      Wag the dog. They've got us all shooting at each other.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    9. Re:Someone tell me by ultranova · · Score: 2

      ie, push filters outward to your cooperative isp's so that its stopped there.

      Filtering takes more resources than just blindly passing everything on. Why would an ISP accept filters from non-customers? Especially a bank?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    10. Re:Someone tell me by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      so naturally they can't comprehend of a liberal democracy where this might not be the case.

      Wrong. They understand what liberal democracy it. It is just they reject it utterly because they believe they are commanded by God to do so (according to their teachings). Similarly, parts of the political classes in the West are starting to utterly reject the notions of the political Islamists, since it seeks to eventually replace all other systems. Please don't confuse each 'side' with not comprehending each other's point of view. Both positions are pretty well understood. It is just that each side rejects the other. Note, however, that liberal democracy can tolerate aspects of the religious myths of Islam (eg. Muslim Israelis are tolerated, even in the IDF, for example). What liberal democracy rejects is the political system of Islam and the tyrrany of some parts of the religion [eg. poor treatment of women, the non-egalitarian concept of dhimmitude, the inability to question the clerics etc]).

    11. Re:Someone tell me by dissy · · Score: 2

      How does that get good results?

      If you do nothing about the attack, your site is down.
      If you pipe all traffic to /dev/null, your site is still down.

      Being down is not better than being down, those two things are the same thing.

    12. Re:Someone tell me by xenobyte · · Score: 2

      ... Does YouTube have a DDoS problem from this group, too?

      DDoS probably but problem? No.

      YouTube is a massively distributed service, like Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. and it is close to impossible to take out the entire distributed service. They may take out some parts if they're really good, but most of the service will remain. DDoS is only really efficient on sites hosted on single servers or small clusters with single points of failures.

      The best DDoS looks exactly like regular traffic, but most tools do quantity, not quality. Duplicated packages, invalid checksums etc. makes detection and blocking fairly easy for a good network administrator. The painfully simple LOIC from Anonymous is better but requires a lot of people that all will be revealing their IP unless they use tor or similar. Traffic from LOIC can only be distinguished from normal traffic due to repetition (it performs a real query (full tcp dialog) again and again, several times a second). and it pretty hard to block automatically. Scripts can be written that extracts repeating IPs and blocks them in the firewall but it's a slow process that takes hours given a non-changing group of attackers, and days to be complete if new people join the attacks along the way.

      The brute force DDoS is harder to beat - It simply saturates the full bandwidth with traffic, often bogus replies from various amplification attacks. If the attacker can generate enough traffic, it works. If not, it's hardly noticeable. To beat such an attack you need upstream help.

      --
      "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
  3. That's a long name by thoughtlover · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...and Islamic extremist hacker group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters is claiming responsibility

    Man, they really need a simpler name. A catchy logo would help, too.

    --
    No sig for you! Come back one year!
    1. Re:That's a long name by Fluffeh · · Score: 2, Funny

      Man, they really need a simpler name. A catchy logo would help, too.

      Who cares what their name is. Clearly they are doing this to get their 72 Interest Free Credit Cards on the other side... Wait, wut?

      --
      Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
    2. Re:That's a long name by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Funny

      Man, they really need a simpler name. A catchy logo would help, too.

      I propose calling them Muhhackers and the logo could be Muhammad with a logic bomb in his turban.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  4. Misdirected anger? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The group ... reiterated its demands: that a controversial YouTube video mocking the prophet Mohammed "be eliminated from the Internet."

    And these idiots think the banks are responsible and/or control the Internet and its content? - sigh

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Misdirected anger? by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Um, the "Innocence of Muslims" video was created by a Coptic (Egyptian Christian) to point out bad aspects of Mohammed (eg. marrying a 6 year old and ) and Islam. The video has terrible production values and is completely insensitive, but I think the core concepts actually come from the Qur'an itself.

      The video was intended to show hypocracy, highlight the nastier aspects of the Qur'an, and show inflame Muslims (who are insensitive and increasingly violent to Copts). The real problem is not the video, it is: the oversensitivity of Muslims to any criticism, eg. they immediately turn to violence; and the craven cowardice of supposedly free societies who do not stand up for free speech and instead appease the violent who are clearly breaking local laws. This may sound harsh, but free speech requires the right to offend, even with a dumb and insulting (but scripturally accurate, AFAIK) video. Ignoring violent acts because of a video is not what the police should be doing - but they are currently cowed. How is this healthy in the long term?

  5. Re:Flawless by bioneuralnet · · Score: 2

    Yes, it's obvious that Bank of America produced that video. Now excuse me while I go throw pinecones at the moon in support of the Kyoto treaty.

  6. Re:Not that I'm into Islamist hackers or anything by Ambiguous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    wrecking havoc

    Oh, no! Our precious havoc!

    --
    Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
  7. "Hackers" who don't understand the Internet by MaxToTheMax · · Score: 2

    This story just goes to show, anyone can install and use Low-Orbit Ion Cannon, even if he or she doesn't understand how the Internet works. No matter where you fall on the "hacker" definition debate, it's pretty clear that these people aren't hackers.

  8. A short sharp shock needed by Animats · · Score: 2

    If Islam is that threatened by a badly produced video from a religious group, maybe it just needs a bigger push to bring it down.

    1. Re:A short sharp shock needed by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

      Perhaps a demonstration of Islam and Rule 34 is in order. (Actually, it most likely already exists and many of these people know of it. The hypocrisy of many religious folks is pretty spectacular at times)

  9. Re:How stupid do they think we really are? by HexaByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about we just eliminate all of the Prophet Mohammed's followers from the face of the earth?

    Maybe the banks should tell them if they don't stop the they'll retaliate by bombing Mecca with pigs.

    I've really had enough of these shit-heads.

    --
    HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
  10. Extremist group? by timeOday · · Score: 2

    If all they're doing is DDOS'ing websites they disagree with, they're exactly as extremist as Anonymous.

  11. Retaliate! by kawabago · · Score: 4, Funny

    At 8pm EST Dec. 13 let's all DDOS God! Repeat Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah ...

    1. Re:Retaliate! by HexaByte · · Score: 2

      At 8pm EST Dec. 13 let's all DDOS God! Repeat Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah ...

      Heaven.com replies: "I'm sorry but there is no one here by that name."

      --
      HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
  12. Re:Fuck them by ultranova · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The muslims or the banks?

    Snark aside, I think we should encourage the transition from real to this kind of financial cyber-terrorism - not only does it not get anyone killed, but the targets have almost certainly deserved it many times over. Heck, harassing the banks could well end up helping the economy by hindering their ability to parasite off it.

    Two evils duking it out is great for the rest of us, who get a break from both, and some free entertainment on top of it. Make some popcorn, pop a few beers, and watch the fireworks.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  13. Re:How stupid do they think we really are? by Merk42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So... making ignorant threats against an entire culture is okay when you do it?

  14. Re:Islamism is the Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When the Christians come up with government support to kill you for being an atheist I'll start to consider them a bigger threat. Until then you're neglecting the bigger picture. Most likely because you have a chip on your shoulder and haven't seriously considered how much your life would be totally fucked in a Muslim nation. And so it goes.
     
    Why is it that every article about Islam brings out the Christian bashers in droves? I guess these kinds of people have no perspective. In some countries your post would get you jailed (and worse) for admitting to be an atheist. Tell me how the Christians are doing this to you again? Show me the great Christian theocracy is that you guys claim is just as bad as nations that openly support Sharia law.

  15. Re:Islamism is the Problem by Nyder · · Score: 2

    These Islamists want to control you and your life. Convert or suffer. Yes, they are weak now, but that may not always be the case. All you pricks that crap on Israel need to know that millions of Muslims, perhaps not a majority, but millions of Muslims hate you.

    Well, this is a good example of why religions are stupid and harmful. Hate? Is that what religions teach? Hate me because I'm different? Because I'm a white American? Or is it because I don't believe in religions? I don't hate you, I don't hate anyone. If being religious means I need to hate, I DO NOT WANT!

    I don't care what you believe, but if you hate me because of your beliefs, then you have some serious problems.

    --
    Be seeing you...
  16. No it's not wasted. by elucido · · Score: 2

    You can (some sites have before), but doing so takes up resources and won't necessarily stop all the different attack vectors. DDoS can use multiple approaches aside from just flooding the server with requests. You can, in theory, protect against all the known attacks, but that requires time and money before the attack starts, which might be wasted if you never get attacked (you don't typically want 10x your expected maximum load worth of bandwidth just sitting around unless you absolutely need it, for example).

    What you need is enough redundancy so that DDOS is worthless. You also need near instantaneous recovery time. A cloud network could provide redundancy and virtualization could decrease recovery time. The attack vectors also aren't unlimited so unless it's some sort of zero-day it's going to be known.

  17. Re:Islamism is the Problem by TheMiddleRoad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, yes. The Islamists are actively trying to kill the Israelis, and more specifically the Jews. That justifies self-defense, does it not? Truth be told, the Palestinians in Israel get better treatment than most Arabs in other countries. They only complain because of the Jews.

  18. Re:Its becoming clear, insightful my ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because Islam extremists represent all religious minded folks.

    What's that nerds are usually so adamant about? Something about not painting everyone with one brush?

  19. Re:Islamism is the Problem by TheMiddleRoad · · Score: 2

    Last I checked, Israelis weren't trying to kill all the Palestinians. Last I checked, most Palestinians were pretty keen on killing all the Jews. No matter what Israel does, from leaving Gaza to providing free hospital care, the Palestinians insist on trying to kidnap and kill Jews. Fuck them.

    You're probably one of the idiots with his own personal definition of antisemitism.

  20. Re:Islamism is the Problem by TheMiddleRoad · · Score: 2

    Currently, there is an insignificant number of Christians who will try to kill you for your beliefs. There is, in contrast, a rather significant number of Muslims who would love to string our atheist asses up. Well, they'd probably stone us to death.

  21. Re:Its becoming clear, insightful my ass by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    Trolling, but arguably with some truth. The only difference between religion and delusion is in the number of followers.

  22. Blah! by Evtim · · Score: 2

    There are about a million good reasons why the banks should be attacked if not completely destroyed. That blasted movie is NOT one of them.
    I wonder if the attackers are aware that their actions in this case work exactly against their interests.

  23. Re:Cloud computing is the easy way by Rogerborg · · Score: 2

    Just so we're all clear, if your answer involves "the cloud" then you didn't understand the question.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  24. Re:Read op the paradox of tolerance by flyneye · · Score: 2

    The prophet David Byrne once said " In the future it will be a relief to find a place with no culture".
    This was corroborated by the prophet Jagger who said " You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you'll find, you get what you need."

    --
    *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!