Syrian Electronic Army struck again, with an attack on 11 Twitter accounts associated with The Guardian newspaper, resulting in a temporary suspension of their accounts.
A Syrian hacktivist group that supports the Syrian President Bashar Assad's rule has targeted The Guardian this time. With rising concerns about the security of corporate Twitter accounts amid a series of hacks, Twitter's credibility to provide security to its users is being questioned. The Guardian said Monday that its Twitter accounts were hacked over the weekend, resulting in a spread of "lies and slander about Syria."
The Guardian said that the matter is being investigated as they discovered the Tweets were generated from the IP addresses within Syria. The newspaper witnessed an earlier attack within the organization when suspicious emails were sent to the staff members, tricking them into disclosing their security details.
"We are aware that a number of Guardian Twitter accounts have been compromised and we are working actively to resolve this," said a Guardian News & Media representative.
The British Newspaper's accounts that were hacked into include Guardian Books, Guardian Film, and Guardian Travel. However, the paper said that it had recovered some of the accounts, while others remain suspended.
The news comes shortly after the SEA hacked The Associated Press last week, sending out rumors of an explosion at the White House and injuring President Obama, which caused a brief variation in the stock market. Several other accounts which have been hacked in the recent months also include BBC, NPR, CBS and FIFA.
"Messaging services such as Twitter or Facebook are not direct news sources. They relay messages, so people should always be aware that the information may not be credible," Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath, wrote in a blog, according to a report from Dark Reading. "The good news is that it would be extraordinarily difficult to hack multiple news agencies at the same time with the exact same fake news, and people rely on multiple news sources to validate information.
"Hopefully, The Guardian will cease control back of all its accounts soon - and will join the growing band of [organizations] hoping that Twitter introduces stronger security for corporate accounts," he said.
According to a message in the SEA website, reported by Dark Reading, the series of attacks on high-profile corporate organizations were in vengeance for suspending SEA Twitter accounts and for the "slander about Syria."
