They claim to have also gained access to staff email accounts

May 7, 2013 07:13 GMT  ·  By

Hackers of the Syrian Electronic Army have hijacked the social media accounts of yet another news organization. Their latest victim is The Onion, the famous American news satire organization.

The hackers say they’ve hijacked a total of five Twitter accounts – TheOnion, OnionSports, ONN, TheAVClub and OnionPolitics –, and two of the publication’s Facebook accounts.

“Syrian Electronic Army Hacked today Twitter accounts and Facebook pages of The Onion satirical newspaper. And that came after that website published a news that harms the reputation of Syria and its leader,” the hackers wrote on their website.

SyriaNews has caught a glimpse of the messages published by the pro-Assad hackers from the compromised accounts.

“UN’s Ban Ki Moon condemns Syria for being struck by israel: ‘It was in the way of Jewish missiles’,” one of the tweets read.

“UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: ‘Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor’,” the hackers wrote.

Shortly after recovering their accounts, representatives of The Onion have confirmed the incident, in their own manner.

“Following today’s incident in which the Syrian Electronic Army hacked into The Onion’s Twitter account, sources at America’s Finest News Source confirmed that its Twitter password has been changed to OnionMan77 in order to prevent any future cyber-attacks,” reads an article published on The Onion shortly after the breach.

The Onion has published several satirical posts related to the incident, including “The Onion’s tips on how to prevent your major media site from being hacked” and “Syrian Electronic Army has a little fun before inevitable upcoming deaths at hands of rebels.”

In addition to compromising The Onion’s social media accounts, the Syrian Electronic Army also appears to have hijacked the email accounts of at least a couple of staff members.

This might indicate that they have once again used targeted phishing emails to accomplish their goals.