Israeli hackers take down UAE and Saudi Arabia stock exchange sites

In a continually escalating cyber struggle between Israeli and Saudi Arabian hackers, it’s hard to see how latest spate of attacks will come to an end, as retaliations on both sides have increased.

We just reported this morning on Israeli findings on the attacks on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al websites. Now an Israeli hacker has gone after the Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates stock exchange sites.

In a post shared on Pastebin today, the Israeli hackers stated:

Because lame hackers from Saudi Arabia decided to launch an attack against Israeli sites such as the airport site “EL-AL” and sites of Israeli banks, today, 01/17/12
Official stock exchange site of Saudi Arabia at the following address http://www.adx.ae not be available online and is only the beginning, in addition there may be disruption to the government’s stock exchange site at the following:
http://www.sama.gov.sa/
If the lame attacks from Saudi Arabia will continue, we will move to the next level which will disable these sites longer term may come to weeks or even months.
You have been warned.

This post comes one day after a warning was issued from a different account on Pastebin, in which the hackers threatened to attack several Saudi Arabian and UAE-based banking, government, airlines and exchange sites.

Haaretz reports that the hackers did in fact take down the Saudi Arabian and UAE stock exchange sites, Tadawul and ADX respectively, but access to the sites has since been restored. At the time of writing this, however, the official Saudi Arabian government stock exchange site, Sama.gov.sa remains inaccessible, as the screenshot from Down for Everyone below shows: