Today, Microsoft’s official blog and the @XBoxSupport and @MSFTnews Twitter accounts were hacked, the latter sending out anti-Microsoft messages which have since been deleted. The Syrian Electronic Army is taking credit for the attack, but Microsoft says the situation is under control and no customer data was compromised.
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The Syrian Electronic Army has made quite a name for itself. It has hacked a number of high profile Twitter accounts as well as websites, and its latest target is related to probably the most high profile individual on the planet, U.S. President Barack Obama. The President’s social media updates on Facebook and Twitter were hijacked today apparently by exploiting a vulnerability in the URL shortener that is used to promote Organizing for Action, which supports Obamacare. Furthermore, the Syrian Electronic Army also claims that it has been able to access “many Obama campaign emails,” and has also been able to hack into Obama’s donation website. The hijacked links posted on Facebook and Twitter took visitors to a 24 minute video titled “Syria facing terrorism,” but they have now been fixed.
President Obama’s Social Media Updates, Campaign Emails Get Hijacked original content from Ubergizmo. 
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In just latest of many head-turning exploits, the Syrian Electronic Army now says it’s broken into Barack Obama’s Twitter account and website. Indeed, the hacker organization showed images of the website’s backend and Obama campaign email accounts.
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The Syrian Electronic Army has struck again. It has been been in the news numerous times over the past few months as it took down various high profile Twitter accounts, such as those belonging to the Associated Press, Thomson Reuters and CBS. It also claimed to have hacked into Viber’s database. Today the SEA hacked and defaced the marines.com website. It left a message for US Marines, “refuse your orders,” it said as speculation about possible U.S. military intervention against Syria mounts.
It has been acknowledged in a statement that the Marines website had suffered an attack, but it is said that “the site itself was not hacked.” The statement released claims that visitors were actually redirected away from the real website. The website is now operating normally and the Marines are keeping an eye out to prevent any further attacks. The attack might have been provoked by the positioning of a U.S. Navy ship carrying Marines in the Eastern Mediterranean, however U.S. officials say that Marines won’t be inserted into Syria if the country goes ahead with military intervention. The message that was left behind contains pictures of picture wearing U.S. military uniforms, holding up signs in front of their faces, venting dissent. [Image via WSJ]
Marines Website Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Melbourne IT, an Australian domain name registration, just got hijacked, apparently by the very busy Syrian Electronic Army. This shouldn’t be a surprise since it’s the same company that was implicated in Tuesday’s New York Times
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Yesterday, we brought you word that Twitter’s domain registration was taken over by the Syrian Electronic Army, and here we are with word that the next alleged victim of the Syrian Electronic Army would be The New York Times – as those who clicked on The New York Times’ website ended up with nothing but error messages throughout Tuesday, making this the site’s second major disruption in the month of August alone.
Within a few minutes of the attack, the New York Times had set in place alternative websites, and also posted up stories concerning the chemical attacks that have appalled the world, which happened in Syria recently. One of the headlines read, “Not Easy to Hide a Chemical Attack, Experts Say.” According to one of the posts by The New York Times, they mentioned, “Our Web site was unavailable to users in the United States for a time on Tuesday. The disruption was the result of an external attack on our domain name registrar, and we are at work on fully restoring service. We regret if this has caused you any inconvenience.”
The Syrian Electronic Army did send out a warning over Twitter before the affected sites were attacked, which read ominously, “Media is going down …”
NY Times Site Hacked original content from Ubergizmo. 
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NYTimes.com went dark for the second time in a month on Tuesday afternoon, but that doesn’t mean the newspaper will stop publishing. Bypassing the DNS, The Times is continuing to publish stories under its bare IP address. And the reporters are continuing to write.
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The Syrian Electronic Army has certainly carved quite a name for themselves by now, claiming a fair number of high profile scalps just this year alone. Well, their latest “victim” would be the most recent plaything of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as we have learned that the Washington Post’s website has been hacked, and a select bunch of users who tried to access its stories have been redirected to the page of Syrian Electronic Army. The Syrian Electronic Army’s political stance is pretty much set – this particular group provides full backing to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the Washington Post is currently working to ensure that their site is fixed as soon as possible, without listing out just which article pages will point to the Syrian Electronic Army.
As mentioned earlier, there were several high profile targets that were hit by the Syrian Electronic Army earlier this year, and some of them do share one thing in common – they are news organizations. For instance, this April the Syrian Electronic Army claimed to have infiltrated the Associated Press’ Twitter account, posting an erroneous message that Olympus has fallen – nay, the White House had been bombed. Not only that, the Financial Times was also hacked not long after that. This just makes us wonder who is next in line, if any.
Washington Post Website Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Even with Twitter adding two-factor authentication
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The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed responsibility for a number of high profile hacks in the past. They were able to commandeer Twitter accounts of the Associated Press, BBC, CBS and other news outlets. They have also been involved in […]
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