On Friday, a group of purportedly Gazan hackers defaced Israel's Fire and Rescue Services website. They added a "death to Israel" message to the website and modified a picture of Danny Ayalon, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, superimposing foot prints over his face. 

Danny Ayalon (pictured to the right) is the public official responsible for a strongly worded statement denouncing hacking, likening it to terrorism and threatening that, "Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action". Hackers were apparently not amused by Ayalon's choice of words.

The statement was made in response to a cyber attack against Israel where hackers claim to have pilfered as many as 400,000 "Zionist" credit cards, complete with addresses, names and Israeli ID numbers (ie. Social Security). Although estimates vary wildly, at least several thousand of those credit card numbers were verified as legitimate cards. 

Most of the stolen credit cards have not been released yet, according to 0xOmar, the Anonymous hacker who took responsibility for the attack that harvested the card numbers. However, the individual claims (link may be removed at any time) he will continue to slowly release Israeli credit card numbers every day.

From now, I shout to all Israeli people, daily I'll publish 200 credit cards of Israeli people. All people who's interested in fresh working credit cards, join our movement, subscribe to our page to receive daily 200 credit cards. Using this method, Israeli banks shred all sites in a day and people will be able to purchase all they want.

The now infamous hacker did not take credit for the latest website defacement, however, he offered a pat on the back for those who were responsible. Also in his Pastebin statement, 0xOmar made the following remarks:

I create an exploit page using a browser based exploit, I email URL and put hidden iframe to my exploit page, I infect a lot of PCs around world with my bot, my bot is coded in C++ all by myself, it have a functionality in addition to all features of other bots, it has an encrypted SOCKS5 protocol, I can see live bots in my administrator server, I use them to connect to other and from there to another and ... I do it sometimes 2 times, sometimes 4 times, it depends on my hurry. ISPs doesn't store details of connections on those ports, so don't waste your time, it's for Mossad.

I use a really complicated hand-made method for hiding myself, so if you reach to Dubai, Mexico, Riyadh, Minsk, Helsinki, New York, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Tokyo, Moscow, etc. excellent! You found one my my poor victims.

In the second part of the hacker's long-winded message on Pastebin, 0xOmar's unscrupulous intentions become clear:

Let's gather together and join this anti-Israeli hacking movement.
Let's hack Israeli shopping websites and publishing customer data online.
Let's hack Israeli military websites and publish their sensitive and hidden information.
Let's hack Israeli military contractors and publish their projects details.
Let's make cyber world dangerous for Israel.
Let Israel suffer from our attacks.
Let's make them cry like they made Palestinian children cry.
Let's help to make Palestine free, let's end Israeli occupation.
From here, I send my thanks to Gaza hackers who have successfully hacked stupid Danny Ayalon website.

Amidst the recent onslaught of cyber attacks, Israel's military has stepped up its game by hiring over 300 computer experts, the Jewish Post reports. A senior officer involved with the project claims the new additions are some of the most talented computer experts in the world, although many do not hold college degrees and for some, not even high school diplomas.