14 DAY TRIAL // A couple of days ago, the Syrian Electronic Army managed to redirect visitors of barackobama.com, the US president’s official website, to a page that read “Hacked by SEA.” However, the hack attacks against Barack Obama haven’t stopped there.
On Monday, the hackers hijacked Obama’s Twitter and Facebook messages by compromising the URL shortening service used for the social media accounts by Organizing for Action, the US president’s campaign organization.
The Syrian Electronic Army made it so that all the links from Barack Obama’s messages led users to a 24-minute video called “Syria facing terrorism.”
“We are watching you, Obama Bin Laden,” the Syrian Electronic Army’s members said. “Thank you Obama for redirecting people to the SEA website.”
“Obama doesn't have any ethical issues with spying on the world, so we took it upon ourselves to return the favor,” they added. “Obama spent so much money ravaging Syria with terror, he can't even pay his bills.”
So how did the Syrian Electronic Army manage to hijack Barack Obama’s Facebook and Twitter accounts? As usual, they hacked several other accounts to pull it off.
“We accessed many Obama campaign emails accounts to assess his terrorism capabilities. They are quite high #SEA,” the hackers wrote on Twitter.
The pro-Assad hacktivists have told Mashable that they hacked a total of eight email accounts which gave them access to Blue State Digital (BSD), a media strategy and technology firm that handled the Obama campaign between 2008 and 2012, and ShortSwitch, the URL shortening service used by Organizing for Action.
The hackers say that none of the email accounts had two-factor authentication enabled, so they could easily hijack them.
Once they gained access to the BSD and ShortSwitch accounts, they could redirect certain links to any website.
“We are working with OFA. Evidence suggests credentials were compromised elsewhere and used by unauthorized parties. Forensics ongoing,” ShortSwitch representatives stated.
