14 DAY TRIAL // Up until now, the Syrian Electronic Army has breached, on average, the Twitter accounts of one high-profile organization per week. Over the past week, things seem to have changed.
After breaching the accounts of CBS and FIFA a couple of days ago, on Tuesday, the hackers managed to hijack two Twitter accounts of the Associated Press, @AP and @AP_Mobile.
From the @AP account, the hackers published the following message: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”
Much to the hacktivists’ satisfaction, the tweet had a major impact, causing even the Dow Jones industrial average to fall for a short period of time.
“The leadership of the Syrian army announces e-account penetration and Associated Press World, publishes news of an explosion in the White House and Obama injury which led to strikes across the United States and a decline in U.S. stocks,” reads a rough translation of a message posted by the hackers on Facebook.
The Associated Press quickly moved to suspend the affected accounts. The @AP_Politics and @AP_Courtside accounts have also been suspended as a precaution.
“Earlier this afternoon the @AP Twitter account was hacked. Out of a sense of caution, we have suspended other AP Twitter feeds. We are working with Twitter to sort this out,” Paul Colford, director of AP media relations, stated.
The AP reports that the FBI has launched an investigation into the incident.
The Syrian Electronic Army has hacked numerous Twitter accounts over the past months, but we know little about how they’ve managed to pull off the attacks. This time, however, some interesting things have come to light.
Shortly before the AP Twitter accounts were compromised, AP staffers had received emails from the company’s Information Security department warning them about phishing emails designed to steal their login credentials.
JimRomenesko.com has obtained copies of both the warning and the phishing email.
In addition, sources have told TMZ that there might be a connection between the Syrian Electronic Army and Exposed.re, the website responsible for leaking the details of dozens of celebrities and public figures.
We’re still trying to find out if this is accurate.
Update. Syrian Electronic Army members have told Softpedia there is no connection between them and the individuals behind Exposed.re, the famous leak site which has been once again taken down.
