Islamic hacktivists disrupt PNC Bank over “Innocence of Muslims”

Evidently, they also use Google+ to some degree. Nothing to see here, just your basic cyber-terrorists.

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 have said that the attacks are in retaliation for a video trailer denigrating the Prophet Muhammad. The amateurish YouTube video made in the U.S. has sparked violent protests in the Middle East and other regions.To participate in the hactivists campaign, a supporter goes to one of two file-sharing sites and downloads a program written in a scripting language that runs in a web browser.

Once the program is running, a person only has to click on a “start attack” button to send continuous requests to the targets website. All of the traffic seen by FireEye has come from Web browsers, an indication that the attackers are not using a network of compromised machines, called a botnet. Such networks are also a popular method for launching distributed denial of service attacks, which are said to be crude but still effective ”The bad part about this attack is its so simple,” Mushtaq said. “Theyre not using any botnet. They’re using browsers.”

More via CSO Online – Security and Risk.