The Islamist hackers who have hammered American bank websites for the past month and a half are taking a break.
The hacking group, known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, says it will continue to target American banks through distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks until the insulting "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer is "erased" from the Internet — but only after taking this week off to observe an Islamic holiday.
During their downtime, the hackers have invited the press to contact them for an exclusive interview.
"Due to approaching Eid al-Adha and to commemorate this breezy and blessing day, we will stop our attack operations during the next days. Instead, we are going to have an interview with one of the American media and press about our ideas and positions," the Cyber Fighters wrote in a Pastebin message posted Tuesday (Oct. 23), along with an email address. "Every press volunteer to interview us, send its full specifications and offers to us."
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The group claimed responsibility for attacks against Bank of America and Capital One last month.
This week's message mentioned the attack on HSBC earlier this week that was claimed by Anonymous offshoot FawkesSecurity, but the Qassam Cyber Fighters didn't explicitly put up a counter-claim.
In a humanizing move, the group joked about the side benefit of its actions for bank employees.
"Every day we are giving a compulsive break to all employees of one of the banks," the Pastebin posting said.
TechNewsDaily has reached out to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters for comment, and will update this story if the group responds.
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