The Financial Times was the latest target of hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army, according to Reuters’ Mohammed Abbas, Kate Holton and Ben Berkowitz. The group apparently hacked the British newspaper’s website and Twitter account, replacing its headlines and posting links on its Twitter account to a video on YouTube.
The Syrian Electronic Army
The video supposedly shows members of a rebel group in Syria executing Syrian soldiers who are kneeling and wearing blindfolds. The group is known as the Nusra Front, and it’s believed to be linked with al Qaeda. The Syrian Electronic Army is also believed to support Bashar al-Assad, who is currently the president of Syria.
The hackers replaced stories with headlines reading, “Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army” and “Syrian Electronic Army was here.” The articles under each of the headlines was left blank without any other messages or content. In addition to the video link posted on the paper’s Twitter feed, there were also posts that read, “Do you want to know the reality of the Syrian ‘Rebels’?”
In the past, the same group has targeted a number of other high profile sites, including that of the BBC’s weather service, the France 24 news service in France and Human Rights Watch.
The Financial Times Appears To Be Back Up
The Financial Times released a statement confirming that some of its blogs and social media accounts have been targeted by hackers. The Next Web contributor Nick Summers reported that the hackers may have gained control over as many as 14 different Twitter accounts operated by The Financial Times.
The newspaper said it was working quickly to resolve the problem. As of this writing, the paper’s website appeared to be back. Also several of the paper’s Twitter accounts had posts confirming that they had been reclaimed and then apologizing for the hack of its site and Twitter accounts.
Twitter hasn’t commented on this latest round of Twitter hacks, although calls for the social media network to increase security have increased as more and more major media accounts are being attacked by hackers.
