14 DAY TRIAL // The Syrian Electronic Army has grabbed the headlines of online news yet again, with new hacking deeds, one of the latest claims being the hijacking of the Twitter account of the Thomson Reuters (@ThomsonReuters) business news agency.
According to various interviews online, the name of the group is not linked in any way to the Syrian government, and they focus on disrupting media campaigns they believe to be biased and damaging to the image of their country through electronic means.
They are also supporting President Bashar al-Assad, as depicted in the political cartoon images posted on Reuter’s Twitter channel.
The attack on @ThomsonReuters account became clear around 6:30AM (ET) and consisted in posting of a set of seven pictures, which were available to the followers for over an hour.
It appears that the fun for the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) ended about 35 minutes later as no posts were recorded until the account was suspended, around 7:45AM (ET).
BuzFeed managed to grab all seven political cartoons posted by SEA on the @ThomsonReuters Twitter account.
The group seems to have been highly active lately: it appears that they are also responsible for hacking into the personal accounts of three White House employees.
Reports say that the attack was possible via elaborate phishing disguised as legitimate articles from BBC and CNN that pointed to fake Gmail and Twitter login screens.
Moments ago, SEA’s Twitter feed received updates revealing the old passwords for the @whitehouse Twitter and HootSuite accounts.
It appears that the countersign for the HootSuite social media management dashboard was the simple, unimaginative and highly advised against “Password12.”