A group of hackers identifying themselves as the Syrian Electronic Army, struck again and targeted major a media Twitter account, @ThomsonReuters, late on Monday afternoon.
A Syrian hacktivist group that supports the Syrian President Bashar Assad's rule targeted the official Twitter account of business news agency Thomson Reuters, Monday afternoon. Hackers posted a series of violent and offensive political cartoons on the agency's news feed. The attack comes after almost two months of silence since May.
Twitter introduced a two-factor authentication process in May to enhance security of all Twitter accounts. The SEA targeted several media organizations earlier this year. The hackers claimed responsibility for the attacks on official Twitter accounts of CBS, Associated Press, The Guardian and E! Online. Twitter's shortcoming to provide security to major media organizations was questioned on a vast scale. Despite the introduction of the new authentication process, the hackers managed to get into the official Twitter account of Thomson Reuters, which is the first to be reported in months.
The hackers began posting content on the business news agency at 6:33 p.m. ET. A series of tweets with offensive political cartoons depicting the ongoing civil war in Syria were posted for almost 45 minutes. The account was suspended at about 7:45 p.m. ET. Other affiliates of Thomson Reuters and the Reuters news agency websites remained unaffected.
The account has returned to its normal function, but no updates to @thomsonreuters have been posted in about 8 hours. All offensive content from the news feed was removed by the agency, but Buzzfeed was able to collect the series of pictures on its site.