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Note: Financial services website disrupted by DDoS attacks launched to protest anti-Muslim film, following similar attacks against Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and Bank of America.
After attacking the websites of Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank earlier this week, Muslim hacktivists Thursday also claimed credit for disrupting the PNC Financial Services Group website.
The attacks were carried out under the banner of "Operation Ababil," which last week disrupted the websites of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. This week's banking attacks--against Wells Fargo Tuesday, U.S. Bank Wednesday, and PNC Bank Thursday--had been previewed in a Pastebin post uploaded by a hacktivist group calling itself Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam.
Likewise, a Thursday post to the Hilf-Ol-Fozoul blog--which has promoted Operation Ababil and shared links to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) tools--credited the Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam with having organized the recent banking website attacks.
[ Could an international agreement stop international cyber warfare? The Case For A Cyber Arms Treaty. ]
PNC didn't immediately respond to an emailed request for comment about the attacks. But PNC spokesman Fred Solomon told Threatpost Thursday that "traffic to our sites is heavy today and it's of a similar pattern to that seen by other banks of late."
The Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam have said that the...