How the Syrian Electronic Army Hacked The Onion

Nerval's Lobster writes "For comedy publication The Onion, a recent cyber-attack by the Syrian Electronic Army was no laughing matter. The SEA managed to compromise The Onion's Twitter account, plastering it with insults aimed at the United Nations, Israel, and Syrian rebels. 'UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: "Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor,"' read a typical (and perhaps one of the more printable) ones. When the Tweets appeared, some Onion Twitter-followers questioned whether the newspaper was playing some sort of elaborate meta-joke, perhaps riffing on a recent series of high-profile cyber attacks. But the SEA was serious, and so was The Onion about flushing the attackers from its systems. In a new posting on theonion.github.io, the publication's IT crew details exactly what happened. On May 3, attackers from the SEA fired off phishing emails to Onion employees, at least one of whom clicked on a malicious link. From there, the attackers compromised a handful of systems. 'In total, the attacker compromised at least 5 accounts,' the account concluded. 'The attacker logged in to compromised accounts from 46.17.103.125 which is also where the SEA hosts a website.' But following the crisis, The Onion couldn't resist swiping at its attackers. 'Syrian Electronic Army Has a Little Fun Before Inevitable Upcoming Deaths at Hands of Rebels,' read the headline for a May 6 article that described a fictional massacre of the SEA in gruesome detail."

Comments

Re:I read the Onion, I thought it was a joke

[Threni]

No, they really didn't think it through. Like all script kiddies, they do it because getting metasploit and/or hanging around irc channels for weeks means you eventually use someone elses work to temporarily control a twitter account, take shit there and make yourself look like something of a tool, and then lose control of the account. I guess some people are born to die virgins.

What we are seeing here

[dehole]

is that citizens of a once legitimate regime in Syria, fighting to get their story heard by the people of the world.

Ever wonder why the US and EU call the "Syrian" rebels "rebels", but the Mali rebels as "terrorists"? Why do we support the revolution of a sovereign country? Perhaps the revolution ISN'T for the good of the Syrian people, but good for the US, EU, and Israel?