Israel: Credit Companies Report 15,000 Accounts Compromised, Situation Contained
Monday saw the hacking of a prominent Israeli sports web portal, and the announcement by Saudi hackers that hundreds of thousands of Israeli credit accounts were hacked, published online. Fearing consumer panic in light of the alleged hacks, reports coming in from banks and credit card companies shed light on the situation - one which seems to be of a smaller scale than previously anticipated, with the companies reporting that the situation is presently contained.
Compromised credit cards restricted
“There is no reason for customers to panic, the situation has been contained” major Israeli credit card companies said Tuesday, in an effort to reassure thousands of account holders whose details were exposed on Monday.
Saudi hackers claimed to have leaked credit card and personal information of over 400,000 Israelis. The hackers called the cyber attack a “gift to the world for the new year,” which they hoped “would hurt the Zionist pocket.” The file was removed shortly after being posted.
Israeli credit card companies Isracard, Leumi Card and Visa CAL tried to reassure their customers, saying that only 15 000 account have actually been exposed and that the situation has been contained in full.
All three companies are said to be making every effort to contact card holders in order to replace their cards.
“We blocked all of the cards whose numbers were on the list to online use. They can still be used for regular purchases,” Isracard CEO Dov Kotler told Ynet.
Isracard, he added, will replace about 6,600 credit cards: “First of all, we have to keep this proportionate. We have to differentiate between threats made by Saudi hackers and the facts. We’ve been working through the night and we discovered that contrary to reports, between all the credit card companies in Israel only 14,000 accounts or so have been compromised.“That’s about 0.2% of all active accounts in Israel. We will, of course, compensate customers who were compromised – as we routinely do. I’m responsible for my customers. Anyone who suffered damage will be compensated. There is nothing to worry about,” Kotler said.