HACKERS HAVE MANAGED to shut down the Bank of Israel for two whole days, taking advantage of the Jewish festival of Passover, when senior staff members were out of the office.

According to Israeli newspaper Globes, who were first to alert the bank to the fact that they’d been attacked, hackers managed to scrawl "Hear me Jews, you're a nation whose fate is sealed and sooner or later you will lose in war."

The Bank of Israel was quick to close the site until it could get a handle on who exactly was behind the attack, and what damage they had done. The Bank also said that it was 'temporarily closed', but that might just be because its lazy, and patently hopeless security staff wanted to stretch the long weekend out a bit further.

Globes reported that the text went on to say "Victory will come, inshallah (God willing) and the scenario of Chechnya will be repeated and we will drive you out. Millions of young Muslims are willing to die for al-Quds (Jerusalem), which belongs to us."

Globes was apparently told by its sources in the bank that financial reports going as far up as October 2007 had been deleted from the bank’s systems, but Bank of Israel spokesman, Yossi Saadon, said that the problem was 'being dealt with' and that the 'incident has no effect on the bank's internal systems'.

He added that all transactions were protected in such a way that there was no conceivable way that anyone could have hacked into the actual data systems from the Internet. He hopes.

Algeria is the top susupect but not the only one. Some Israelis think that Hizbullah is much more likely to be behind the attack, or Qatar, or even Palestinians from Gaza. But seeing as most of these groups tend to blow things up as a way of expressing themselves, the bank hack seems a tad too articulate.

The bank will be open for business again once the remaining questions about the embarrassing hack have been answered. Or just as soon as the bank’s employees can be bothered to drag themselves back to the office. Probably the latter. µ

L’Inq
Globes