As promised, Islamic hacktivists disrupt PNC Bank

27.09.2012
PNC Bank's website was disrupted on Thursday by a group of Islamic hactivists who have also claimed responsibility for downing the sites this week of Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank.

The latest attack is identical to the other two in that hundreds of thousands of computers are used to overwhelm the sites' bandwidth, said Atif Mushtaq, a security researcher for FireEye who has been monitoring the attacks.

The hactivists also claim to be behind the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks last week against Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, as well .

PNC has confirmed the attack. Spokesman Fred Solomon that the disruption affected some online customers. "We are working to restore full service to everyone," he said.

Based on the kind of traffic Mushtaq has seen, the banks' sites are being overwhelmed by requests from the computers of supporters of the hacktivists. The group, which calls itself "Mrt. Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters," has used social networks, including Google+; underground sites, to recruit sympathizers.

"I'm not surprised that there are thousands and thousands of people performing this type of DDoS," Mushtaq said.