TEL AVIV, Israel, June 28 (UPI) -- A group that calls themselves "Team-Evil Arab hackers" attacked several Israeli Web sites Wednesday, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.
"Hacked by Team-Evil Arab hackers u KILL palestin (sic) people we KILL Israel servers" was the message the newspaper said was left on hundreds of Web sites Wednesday morning, as the Israel Defense Force rolled back into Gaza for the first time since last summer's evacuation of Jewish settlements there to rescue a kidnapped soldier.
The affected sites included several major banks, automobile companies and hospitals, according to the report.
Of the sites said to be hacked, only those of Rambam Medical Center and Citroen Israel were still down Wednesday afternoon when UPI checked. Both sites displayed the message, in Hebrew: "Dear customers, we apologize for the unavailability of this site following a technical malfunction, and are working to put it back up as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience, site management."
A Google search of the message said to be left by the hackers returned no results.
"The group claims to be based in Morocco ... in April of this year the Israel Institute for Biological research and McDonalds Israel were both targeted," the newspaper said.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, this kind of hacking for a cause, "hacktivism," if you will, has been going on for years. "Hackers affiliated with Palestinian and Israeli groups have been attacking one another's Web sites for weeks," the newspaper reported in 2000. "In a particularly severe incident, a pro-Muslim hacker in Pakistan stole the credit card numbers of members of a U.S. pro-Israel lobbying group and posted them on the group's Web page for all to see."
