A series of websites run by various North American and British media organizations, as well as the website of the Canadian unit of Wal-Mart are under a suspected attack by the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacker collective supporting Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad, Reuters reports. Users trying to access certain parts of the attacked websites were greeted by the message “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)” and redirected to the group’s logo.
Among the media sites under attack by the Islamic hacker group we can find British newspapers like The Daily Telegraph, the Independent and the Evening Standard, and North American sites like The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s website or the online edition of the New York Daily, Reuters reports. The attack was also announced on the group’s Twitter feed, with a message that reads as follows:
“Happy thanks giving, hope you didn’t miss us! The press: Please don’t pretend #ISIS are civilians. #SEA”
Although their websites were defaced, the affected companies say that their systems are still safe. Wal-Mart Canada claims that, despite some reports emerged about some unusual behavior on their website, the user data was not accessed. The CBC, Canada’s public broadcast company, has also announced that its systems were not compromised.
The Syrian Electronic Army is an amorphous group of hackers supervised by the Assad administration. Their usual attacks are defacements, spamming, malware, phishing and denial of service (D0S), and they usually target political opposition groups, Western news organizations and human rights groups. The group has claimed responsibility for attacking a large number – hundreds – of news websites that spread news antagonistic to the Syrian government, including BBC News, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, the Washington Post and others. They also post Facebook updates in support of the Syrian government, and are involved in spamming campaigns to spread their messages.