After a series of high-profile Twitter accounts being hacked in the past couple of months, entertainment site E! Online was targeted Saturday and false tweets were sent out about Justin Bieber's sexuality.
The trend continues as the next target of the Syrian Electronic Army was an entertainment news organization, E! Online. The latest attack by the SEA hactivists has spread rumors about the young pop heartthrob, Justin Bieber. A reportedly "exclusive" statement from Bieber to the E! News said that the teen star is "gay". A message was posted on E! Online's Twitter account. The tweet read: "Exclusive: Justin Bieber to E!Online: I'm a gay."
The Twitter feed for the entertainment news organization was hacked Saturday, followed by a series of bogus tweets about celebrities. Bieber's news spread fast among fans across the world with 1,200 retweets and 351 favorites.
The Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsible for the intrusion and the E! Online released a statement in response to the attack.
"Eonline's breaking news twitter and sms accounts were compromised today," the organization said in a statement. "We're working to have this resolved as quickly as possible and are fully investigating the incident.
"We apologize for any confusion that the erroneous news alerts may have caused."
The Syrian Electronic Army posted tweets about other celebs including Selena Gomez who reportedly told E! Online in an exclusive statement that she will support Bieber with his revelation.
The tweets followed another bogus report, which claimed Oscar winning actress Angelina Jolie admitted that "Jordan is to blame for the Syrian refugees' atrocious conditions.
According to a message in the SEA website, reported by Dark Reading last week, the series of attacks on high-profile corporate organizations were in vengeance for suspending SEA Twitter accounts and for the "slander about Syria." The SEA hacktivist group works in support of the Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.
Several media organizations have been a target of the SEA attacks including two CBS News programs "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" which spread rumors of CIA's involvement in aiding the Al-Qaida terrorist group with ammunition.
Last week, The Guardian's 11 twitter accounts were hacked and prior to which the Associated Press was also a target of SEA attack. Stories were put out of an explosion on the White House and President Obama being injured as a result. Other accounts that were hacked by the SEA group included BBC, NPR and Reuters.
