Yesterday, several of CBS’s Twitter accounts were hacked, including its main account, and its accounts for 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and CBS Denver. The hackers got into the account and tweeted a series of things relating to President Obama and the United States being in cahoots with Al-Qaeda. The tweets also had links that led users to malware-infested sites. While CBS was able to regain access to its accounts, it was unable to figure out who was behind the attacks, until now.
The Syrian Electronic Army, the same group that hacked 3 of the BBC’s Twitter accounts, claimed credit for hacking into CBS’s accounts. In a statement through its official website, the Syrian Electronic Army also claimed credit for hacking into an account belonging to a radio station in San Diego. The group published a screenshot of one of the accounts that it had hacked. The groups stated that they used the hacked accounts and “published through it the truth”.
CBS and BBC weren’t the only victims of the Syrian Electronic Army. The group also hacked NPR’s Twitter accounts, the website and Twitter belonging to the Human Rights Watch, and a blog used by Reuters. On its website’s bio, the group states that they are trying to fight against the campaigns “led by the Arab media and Western on our Republic by broadcasting fabricated news about what is happening in Syria”.
Twitter has proceeded to block all Twitter accounts associated with the Syrian Electronic Army, however the group continues to make new ones. There have been several account hacks in the past. Recently Colin Powell’s Facebook had been hacked by the same hacker who obtained personal emails from members of the Bush family. It may be wise for these social networks to implement a two-factor authentication feature to better defend themselves from these type of situations in the future.
[via All Things D]
Syrian Electronic Army claims credit for CBS Twitter accounts hack is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
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I suppose the headline says it all, and it is now down to the little details which should interest many an airline passenger. At least this lends some weight to the argument that one should ensure all electronic items, including smartphones, be turned off throughout the flight, as it just isn’t cool to be on a hijacked flight. Animalnewyork.com has “proof” that smartphones and airplanes are not a desirable mix when you have someone with the technical know how as well as nefarious attitude, where during a security conference in Amsterdam, hacker and researcher Hugo Teso showed off to the world how it is possible to actually hijack a plane’s controls from the ground with an Android-powered smartphone.
Our smartphone apps these days can perform a fair number of tasks, ranging from simple reminders, to more complex such as tracking our location, places we’ve run, how far we’ve run and etc. However an app that could in theory hack aircraft? That just sounds dangerous, but unfortunately it is all too real. Hugo Teso, a security consultant who happens to be a trained commercial pilot, claims to have developed an Android app that can make an aircraft “dance to his tune” by hacking its flight management systems. The hack was shown off at the Hack In The Box conference where the app, dubbed PlaneSploit, was able to seek out targets by infiltrating radio broadcasts between the aircraft and air traffic control, and then hijacking it by sending malicious messages to take over the plane. As it stands, the app is more of a proof-of-concept software and presumably will not be making its way into app stores anytime soon, so hopefully those in charge of security will be looking into this ASAP!
