In recent days, hackers attacked civilian institutions that are considered Hezbollah symbols in media and from the economic sector in Lebanon.
On December 22, the Al-Akhbar (newspaper) website was attacked by hackers.
Al-Akhbar is considered to be a Hezbollah mouthpiece.
The newspaper’s website was subjected to a widespread cyberattack which completely shut it down. It seems that the site was overthrown by millions of fictitious visitors browsing it.
as a consequence, they moved their activity to their Facebook page. they are currently back “on-air” with a backup clone site (beta.al-akhbar.com).
On December 29, it was reported in “alhurra” that a group of hackers called “Spiders” had attacked the systems of “Al-Qard Al-Hasan”. This is Hezbollah’s most important economic institution, which is an alternative to the regular banking system in Lebanon. Al-Qard Al-Hasan began operating as a charity in the 1980s and is not subject to Lebanese banking laws.
Its economic activity is estimated at loans of about $ 500 million with about 200,000 accounts. Al-Qard Al-Hasan is one of Hezbollah’s major money laundering platforms. (more about Al-Qard Al-Hasan at www.terrorism-info.org.il)
The Spiders group announced that they had infiltrated the organization’s accounts. CCTV cameras were also hacked in various branches. Hackers have published documents of the account holders and many details about the various financial transactions from the past two years.
In our opinion, an anonymous source is interested in sending a warning message to Hezbollah to demonstrate its capability. Assuming it is a state factor, it might be Israel or The United States, or Saudi Arabia.
It is also possible that these are independent elements from the Sunni world who are interested in overthrowing Hezbollah or Lebanese elements who oppose Hezbollah and are located outside Lebanon. In our opinion, a local Lebanese factor will not risk performing such an action for fear of its monitoring and capture.
The Spiders’ announcement is in fact also psychological warfare against Hezbollah. We do not know the extent and intensity of the attack. It is possible that the whole essence of the publication of the attack is in fact for the purpose of psychological warfare alone.
