Slashdot Mirror
Syrian Electronic Army Hits Financial Times Sites, Feeds
puddingebola writes with an excerpt from the New York Times: "The Web site and several Twitter accounts belonging to The Financial Times were hacked on Friday by the Syrian Electronic Army in a continuing campaign that has aimed at an array of media outlets ranging from The Associated Press to the parody site The Onion, according to a claim by the so-called army. The Syrian Electronic Army said it seized control of several F.T. Twitter accounts and amended a number of the site's blog posts with the headline 'Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.' Hackers used their access to the F.T.'s Twitter feed to post messages, including one that said, 'Syrian Electronic Army Was Here,' and another that linked to a YouTube video of an execution. Both messages were quickly removed.'"
Why? What do they gain from these hacks?
I have the feeling that this has nothing to do with Syria.
meh...you are too late, suckers!
"Kilroy was here."
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
That's just down right cold.
Karma: Bad
Lay off the moonshine. That shit's rotted your brain.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
False flag? At least now we know what the governement had in mind with this whole "cyberwar" gibberish and the hiring spree...
HA ha! Reminds me of back in the 70's and 80's when there weren't any laws about hacking. This is the kind of crap we'd do for some hackish fun between friends. Cracking each other's servers and BBSs, defacing the login page, appending stupid messages for bragging rights "BoardBurner waz Hear!", ANSI bombing the sysop's terminal (remapping all the keys), messing with TradeWars scores, etc. One day you'd be the victim, the next you'd be the victimizer. Hell, the wise guys would "false flag" a crack and claim to have been the clever work of another hacker's handle to deflect blame (and hacks) onto another lamer's systems... create rivalries where there were none, or sew seeds of doubt among alliances. They would usually be sporting and leave some subtle clues so you could tell who it really was -- Why not take the bait though and get 'em both just for good measure? Ah, good ol' days: Back when two "cyber armies" could have pizza and play skeeball with each other and joke about the hacks after the latest round of the "war".
Now you have to be a member of the select few in a Nation's "cyber army" to escape the laws, but it's interesting to see the goings on mirror those same old childish prankish tricks. Script Kiddies and social engineers can pull off the hacks these folks are capable of too, but the laws are more strictly set against them so a smaller percentage of people that are capable actually try their hand at cracking others' systems. The "whitehats" hack indoors, and try not to be disruptive, while the others run amok for fun and profit -- until they get caught. Ah, but if you're doing it for your country, then you don't have to worry about your nation's police force going after you.
We've seen this game play out before, several times, so expect them to get bored with defacing as they mature and if they last long enough some might even start to study some machine level hacks, and become "real" hackers. Eventually they'll learn not to crow like a rooster and strut your skill when you compromise a system, instead you silently take the helm and use the foothold to infiltrate deeper, spreading your web of control as wide as possible to pull strings behind the scenes and gather information about your enemies, and only disrupt the services if it's worth losing the control: once maximum damage can be done, or you think you'll get caught. In a way they've done just that, it's just that the "maximum damage" they were capable of coming up with (mentally?) was to mess with some social feeds and deface some stories...
Oh No! LulzSec Mk.2! Hide your Kids! Hide your Wives! 'Caus They hackin' 'erry body round here!
/me eats popcorn.
My only real fear is that when we finally create self aware AI soldiers, we'll have used up all the good names: "Electronic Army", awe, they're not cyborgs?
Lame.