14 DAY TRIAL // The Syrian Electronic Army doesn’t like the description posted by Time for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the magazine’s Person of the Year (POY) poll. That’s why they hijacked Time’s Twitter account and disrupted the voting site last week.
On the hijacked Time Twitter account, the hackers posted the following message: “Syrian Electronic Army was here. Next time write a better words about the Syrian president.” The tweet was removed after a few minutes.
Later, the hacktivists urged users to vote for al-Assad in Time’s Person of the Year poll. Then, they shut down the voting page in order to edit the Syrian president’s description.
One of the hackers told journalist Matthew Keys that they had gained access to the publication’s systems by targeting Poptip, an online vendor used by Time. They sent phishing emails purporting to come from the company’s CEO to several employees.
At least one of them fell for it and provided the hackers with information needed to compromise a “super user” account.
In a statement published on Twitter, Poptip confirmed that the company’s employees were targeted in a phishing scam.
“We have determined that only one account was compromised for a period of five minutes. No data has been lost or compromised; all accurate data is intact,” Poptip stated.
Interestingly, Time hasn’t changed al-Assad’s description for the poll. It still reads: “Syria’s ruler presided over a bloody year, shrugging off international concerns over the use of chemical weapons as the death toll of his country’s civil war eclipsed 100,000.”
This isn’t the only problem experienced by Time since the voting started. Last week, some programmers found a way to bypass the voting authentication system and submit a large number of votes for Miley Cyrus, pushing her in the lead.
Voting for Time’s Person of the Year closes on December 4.