Israel's central bank has played down claims that some 400,000 Israelis had their credit-card's compromised by Saudi hackers.

A group of anti-Israel cyber attackers, purporting to be from Saudi Arabia, posted on a sports website the personal credit card information of apparently thousands of Israelis.

They described their actions as a "gift to the world for the New Year" and said they wanted to "hurt the Zionist pocket."

But Israel's central bank said that in reality the number of cards hacked was15,000 - just four per cent of what the hackers had claimed.

Gadi Evron, an expert in cyber attacks, said that this was not a devastating attack, noting that on a daily basis millions of credit card numbers were stolen.

He said that it was unsurprising that the hackers had targeted Israeli cards. "Whenever there is some sort of ethnic or political tension around the world...you can guarantee that two days later or an hour later, for at least a few weeks, there are going to be some kind of online attacks going on.".