Syrian Electronic Army Takes Credit For News Site Hacking

New submitter ddtmm writes The Syrian Electronic Army is claiming responsibility for the hacking of multiple news websites, including CBC News. Some users trying to access the CBC website reported seeing a pop-up message reading: "You've been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)." It appears the hack targeted a network used by many news organizations and businesses. A tweet from an account appearing to belong to the Syrian Electronic Army suggested the attacks were meant to coincide with the U.S. Thanksgiving on Thursday. The group claimed to have used the domain Gigya.com, a company that offers businesses a customer identity management platform, to hack into other sites via GoDaddy, its domain registrar. Gigya is "trusted by more than 700 leading brands," according to its website. The hacker or hackers redirected sites to the Syrian Electronic Army image that users saw. Gigya's operations team released a statement Thursday morning saying that it identified an issue with its domai registrar at 6:45 a.m. ET. The breach "resulted in the redirect of the Gigya.com domain for a subset of users," the company said. Among the websites known to be hacked so far are New York Times, Chicago Tribune, CNBC, PC World, Forbes, The Telegraph, Walmart and Facebook.

Comments

Threat level alpha omega

[OverlyGenericUsernam]

Syrian Electronic Army has truly shown that they are a force to be reckoned with by inconveniencing a handful of websites.
I haven't really heard of them, but apparently they are a thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Electronic_Army

Re:Threat level alpha omega

[ladoga]

But hey, it runs Linux. :)
http://sea.sy/article/id/2048/...

Re:Threat level alpha omega

[Anonymous Coward]

This is script-kiddie level of hacking, and nothing to really be concerned about.

Point 1: None of the news sites were hacked, and the browsers were redirected using javascript inserted into an advertising unit
Point 2: Only people "logged in" to said news sites saw it. Thus the implication of the user management.

Any actual "hacking" was isolated to one site, the site being used by all these news sites user management. This is akin to the same kind of malware "update your flash player" redirects. The problem is that they tune these javascripts to not fire unless running on the third party site, so the people approving the ads, don't ever see the malware.

Like, when logged into the CBC site, you saw the hacked javascript, but if you copy-pasted the same url into a private browsing window, it didn't.

Nothing new here.

Re:Threat level alpha omega

[AK Marc]

I had the backed message pop up once for me, and I was never logged into any of the affected sites.

Re:What

[Etherwalk]

Probably they get to write it up as a victory in their funding request. Either that, or somebody drastically overestimated the effect it would have--But they got it wrong in a few ways. (I will not speculate on exactly how. Certain discussions are better not shared with, you know, the Syrian Electronic Army when they happen across slashdot.)

There are lots of targets that would be really smart to go after if you wanted to get the attention of the average american and/or hurt the US markets. But this op... not so much.

Oprahs site got hacked as well

[angel'o'sphere]

http://www.oprah.com/

Since hours actually and seems no one has noticed there yet or they are unable to fix it, or I get a cashed version of the site.

(And please don't ask me why I visited that site ;) )

The Independent hacked too

[UpnAtom]

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

(how could I not click on that one?)

Hack relies on Javascript.

evil shit

[PopeRatzo]

Gigya.com, a company that offers businesses a customer identity management platform

A "customer identity management platform".

That means, you're not the consumer, your the consumable. Could it sound any more sinister?

Re:Focus on ISIS instead?

[ihtoit]

because the enemy of Syria is in fact Qatar's allies, like the US, the UK and Turkey.

Qatar want a gas pipeline to Europe. Turkey doesn't want it passing through its Eastern desert region. Qatar already has installation rights guaranteed by US occupation forces in Kuwait and Iraq. Syria told Qatar in not so many words to politely fuck off, they're not planting a pipeline through some of the most fertile arable land in the Middle East, so Qatar asked its allies (the US and the UK) to install a pretext to aggressively insert a policing and occupation force (the next inevitable step) into Syria to quell destabilising elements (AKA ISIS/ISIL/TNGAQA (The Next Great American Quad Acronym)) which will already have established as a threat to stability in the entire region. Oh, look, that last step is the only piece of the puzzle still not in place.

OK, commence to calling me a tinpot fucking nutjob. Just remember who the fuck told you so.

Too bad Canadian Thanksgiving is long past

[Walking The Walk]

"claiming responsibility for the hacking of multiple news websites, including CBC News" - CBC being the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "suggested the attacks were meant to coincide with the U.S. Thanksgiving on Thursday" - which had very little effect on us Canadians, seeing as our Thanksgiving was a month ago. Smooth move, morons.

Re:Focus on ISIS instead?

[dave420]

Unless you cite sources for your claims, you are indistinguishable from a tinpot nutjob, so what do you expect? If you can't be bothered to do the hard work to demonstrate your sanity, why should anyone else?

Syrian Electronic Army hacked DNS provider ..

[lippydude]

Headline corrected for accuracy ...

Re:Focus on ISIS instead?

[ihtoit]

offer counterargument instead of simply gainsaying, or your words fall in the same place as any AC. Into the bin with ye.