Retail therapy may be slow and down, but credit card transactions during the 2012 Boxing Day Sales nonetheless have increased by as much as 30 per cent for the National Australia Bank, it said on Thursday.
Retail therapy may be slow and down, but credit card transactions during the 2012 Boxing Day Sales nonetheless have increased by as much as 30 per cent for the National Australia Bank, it said on Thursday. Reuters

Israeli credit cards have been targeted again by a Saudi-based hacker, the chief executive of the country's largest card company told Reuters.

The hacker, who identified himself as OxOmar and a member of a Saudi Arabian Anonymous hacking team, had published the numbers of 11,000 credit cards.

Some 5,200 of the credit card numbers listed by the hacker had been issued by Isracard, a unit of Bank Hapoalim, said Dov Kotler, CEO of the company.

Earlier this week, a group of computer hackers claimed to have stolen and published the details of up to 400,000 active Israeli credit cards.

"Hi, it's OxOmar from group-xp, largest Wahhabi hacker group of Saudi Arabia," read a statement posted on an Israeli sports website. "We are anonymous Saudi Arabian hackers. We decided to release first part of our data about Israel."

Links in the statement led to websites containing details of Israeli credit cards, as well as cards used to purchase merchandise from "Judaism" websites and those used to donate to "Israeli Zionist Rabbis".

Israel David, CEO of Israel Credit Cards-Cal Ltd, confirmed the security breach but said that after combing through details posted online, they had identified only 14,000 valid credit cards.

"These cards are being removed from the system," he said.

According to Kotler, there was no breach of security at the credit card firms or at any banks.

"We are fully in control of the situation," he added.

He said there were some seven million active cards in Israel.

Israel