The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed responsibility for compromising some of CNN's social media accounts on Thursday. The same group also hacked Microsoft's Twitter account earlier this month.
The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed responsibility for hacking some of CNN’s social media accounts.
The group has claimed that the compromised accounts include CNN’s main Facebook account, CNN Politics’ Facebook account, Twitter pages for CNN and CNN’s Security Clearence. Furthermore, Blogs for Political Ticker, The Lead, Security Clearance, The Situation Room and Crossfire were also reported to be hacked. “The posts were deleted within minutes and the accounts have been secured,” adds CNN in a story on its website.
There was a post on CNN’s Twitter account that read, “Syrian Electronic Army Was Here…Stop lying… All your reports are fake!” Another post posted on Thursday night on a Twitter account supposedly linked to the group read that their reason for retaliating was for “viciously lying reporting aimed at prolonging the suffering in Syria.”
Reports earlier this month mentioned that the same group had also hacked Microsoft’s Twitter News account. That made it the second instance where Microsoft’s accounts were hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. Earlier the group had hacked Microsoft’s Xbox Twitter account, Skype’s Twitter and Facebook accounts on New Year Eve’s. Microsoft, which owns Skype, had to issue a warning to discourage people from using Microsoft emails following the New Year’s Day hack.
Reports also popped up in June last year when Thomson Reuters’ official Twitter account was reportedly briefly compromised by the same group. Notably, the group has claimed responsibility for hacking several media groups’ accounts – NPR (on April 16, 2013), CBS’s 60 Minutes (April 21), and the Associated Press (April 23).
The same hacker group had also claimed to compromise Al Jazeera’s website in early 2012, along with other major American and British news organisations including Columbia University and rights group Human Rights Watch.
Their motive clearly seems to be disrupting the Western media.The Syrian Electronic Army likely seems to be a group of college kids supposedly having close ties with the Syrian government. ‘Shadow’, it’s leader, spoke to Digital Trends about SEA’s motives in which he said, “We deliver the voice of the Syrian people [to] explain what is really happening on the ground. Not what the media is doing – [which is the] fabrication of the facts to serve American interest at the expense of the blood of the Syrian people.”
Source: CNN, Digital Trends