{"id":3222,"date":"2013-08-16T16:57:22","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T19:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kwell.net\/kwell_blog\/?p=3222"},"modified":"2013-08-16T17:36:12","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T20:36:12","slug":"syrian-hackers-target-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kwell.net\/kwell_blog\/?p=3222","title":{"rendered":"Syrian Hackers Target The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SEA<\/a><\/p>\n

The Washington Post was hit by the Syrian Electronic Army today, with visitors being redirected to the hackers’ website.<\/p>\n

“The Washington Post Web site was hacked today, with readers on certain stories being redirected to the site of the Syrian Electronic Army,” the paper said in a note on its website<\/a>. “The group is a hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Post is working to resolve the issue.”<\/p>\n

Later, the Post’s managing editor, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, disclosed that the SEA had used a familiar tactic to gain access to the paper: a phishing attack.<\/p>\n

“The attack resulted in one staff writer’s personal Twitter account being used to send out a Syrian Electronic Army message,” Garcia-Ruiz wrote. “For 30 minutes this morning, some articles on our web site were redirected to the Syrian Electronic Army’s site.<\/p>\n

According to the SEA, the hack was perpetrated via an attack on content recommendation service Outbrain, which serves up recommended links at the bottom of news stories across various media outlets, including PCMag. That enabled the SEA to target CNN and Time, as well as the Post, the group said.<\/p>\n

“@TIME, @CNN, @Washingtonpost websites hacked in one strike by hacking @Outbrain,” the SEA tweeted.<\/p>\n

Outbrain confirmed the breach on its blog<\/a>. “We took down service as soon as it was apparent,” the company said. “The breach now seems to be secured and the hackers blocked out, but we are keeping the service down for a little longer until we can be sure it’s safe to turn it back on securely. Please stayed tuned here or to our Twitter feed for updates.”<\/p>\n

Garcia-Ruiz said the Post has removed the offending Outbrain module from its website. “At this time, we believe there are no other issues affecting The Post site,” he said.<\/p>\n

One person reportedly affiliated with the SEA told The Daily Beast<\/a> that recent hacking campaigns were in retaliation for Twitter blocking access to its various feeds.<\/p>\n

In recent days, the SEA has also targeted SocialFlow, a social media optimization platform, to gain access to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of reporters from the Post, Al Jazeera, and The New York Post.<\/p>\n

The Syrian Electronic Army emerged in September. The hackers reportedly started attacking Western websites in retaliation for Innocence of Muslims<\/i>, an anti-Islamic video that resulted in violent demonstrations in the Middle East. They have since been targeting news sites they believe are reporting news hostile to the Syrian government, including the Financial Times<\/a>, The Guardian<\/a>, the BBC<\/a>, and even The Onion<\/a>. Chat apps like Tango and Viber were also attacked.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, The New York Times website was also offline for several hours<\/a>, but that was reportedly due to an internal issue, not a hack.<\/p>\n

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