Hackers call upon Syrian president to take action against ISIS

HACKERS are holding Syria’s president to ransom, calling for the government to take action against the Islamic State.

In this photo, which AP obtained from Syrian official news agency SANA and which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, President Bashar Assad gestures as he speaks during an interview with Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen TV, at the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Syria's president said Monday that the factors that would allow a landmark conference aimed at ending the country's civil war do not yet exist, throwing further doubt on international efforts to hold peace talks that have already been repeatedly delayed. (AP Photo/SANA)

A GROUP of hackers is holding Syria’s economy to ransom as it calls for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to take military action against the Islamic State.

The hackers, known as Project Viridum have taken down the website of Syria’s only stock exchange and claim to have gained access to the exchange’s servers and databases.

The group have also claimed to have planted virus’ into multiple Islamic State operatives computers and has handed the Syrian government information on their whereabouts. With that information in Assad’s hands, the group says unless the president does something with it, it is ready to release all of the information held in the exchange’s database.

The Damascus Secutities Exchange website was taken down using a DDoS attack, the same type of attack that took down Sony’s PlayStation Network earlier this week. However, it is still unclear how the group gained access to the exchange’s database.

After the attack, the group later released a statement on DOXBIN, a website that hackers use to release information on the deep web.

The statement claims that the group has been fighting scammers for the last 4-6 years, while recently focusing their efforts on terrorist groups, with their current goal to “make a dint in the world of terror.”

They also explain that the reason the Syrian exchange was targeted was because the Assad regime had been ignoring their reports of ISIS members location, so they needed to do something to make them listen.

At the time of writing, the DSE website is back online, however that doesn’t mean the group no longer has access to the exchange’s database.