ZCompany
ZCompany launched in February OpFreePalestine against Israeli targets (screengrab)

Hackers affiliated with the ZCompany Hacking Crew (ZHC), which launched OpFreePalestine in February against Israeli targets, have defaced the website of Las Vegas Police Department in a protest against "the insidious evil of Zionism" in the US.

BlackOne HaXor left a message on the defaced homepage in support of Palestine and Pakistan. The message criticised Israel for the "massacre" of Palestinian civilians and hit out at the US army for its soldiers burning a copy of the Koran in Afghanistan.

"The insidious evil of Zionism from the standpoint of US lies in inspiring the alliance of US Zionists and neocons," reads a statement on the defaced site.

"These political factions have joined in a commitment to maintain a racist Jewish colony in Palestine by means of the brutal oppression and suppression of the natives."

The ZCompany stole US and Israeli credit card details in February and posted them on the file-sharing site Pastebin, along with a list of UN resolutions condemning Israel for its hostility toward Palestinians.

The incident is the latest assault in what has been dubbed the Arab-Israel cyberwar. In January, Anonymous Palestine launched a DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack against the Haaretz Hebrew website.

The cyberwar began shortly after Christmas when an elusive young Saudi Arabian hacker, who calls himself OxOmar, released the details of 400,000 credit cards online. Israeli authorities admitted that 15,000 accounts had been hacked.

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