UAE Central Bank thwarts hacking bid

Dubai: The Central Bank of the UAE has fended off an onslaught from hackers trying to bring down its website, the bank's head of information technology (IT) said yesterday.

Israeli hackers were apparently behind the attack, having vowed to target various state-linked websites in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in revenge for a wave of credit card code thefts by a hacker who claimed to be operating out of Saudi Arabia. The websites of Israeli institutions have also been targeted.

Hackers launched the denial-of-service (DoS) attack — usually flooding a web server with false information to make it crash — against the UAE Central Bank website on Thursday, Bob Thomson, chief manager of IT, said.

In response, etisalat, which provides fixed line services to the bank, blocked access to the website from abroad and this thwarted the hackers, Thomson said.

"There was no damage done to the website," he added. "Etisalat was ultra careful, which was the right approach." Hackers calling themselves the IDF Team, an apparent reference to the Israel Defence Force, said on Wednesday in an online post they would disable the UAE Central Bank website.