Rebel Tweets: Syria’s online troops wage cyber war
10 Jun 2013 1:00 AM GMT
Sometimes, attacks in Syria’s bloody civil war start not with a bullet or a bomb blast, but with an innocuous-looking email.
A message pings into an inbox, apparently from a friend or colleague. The recipient clicks a link, and suddenly hackers are one step closer to snatching sensitive information - including passwords to a company’s social media sites.
It’s an old trick, but one effectively deployed time and again by the Syrian Electronic Army in recent months. The supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime have duped numerous Western media outlets into handing over the electronic keys to their Facebook, Twitter and other accounts, leaving many organisations red-faced and scrambling to regain control of their social media streams.
The group’s aim: to spread counter-revolutionary propaganda and hit back at news outlets it says slant their reporting of the conflict that began in March 2011 and has so far claimed an estimated 94,000 lives and displaced millions more.
‘We have literally hacked the planet when it comes to news organisations,’ a spokesman for the group told AFP in an email exchange. ‘There only remains a few untouched social media targets that we fully intend to pay a visit to soon.’
All sides in Syria’s war have used social media to try to drum up support and document atrocities being inflicted on an almost daily basis. Opposition groups were quick to build Facebook pages and post videos depicting gruesome acts by regime forces, but the Syrian Electronic Army - or SEA, as it calls itself - has pushed back in the high-stakes battle to shape public opinion in the West.
The most notorious hack was of The Associated Press’s Twitter stream, resulting in a false tweet saying President Barack Obama had been injured after two blasts at the White House. The message saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffer a ‘flash crash’ before traders realised the tweet was false.
A message pings into an inbox, apparently from a friend or colleague. The recipient clicks a link, and suddenly hackers are one step closer to snatching sensitive information - including passwords to a company’s social media sites.
It’s an old trick, but one effectively deployed time and again by the Syrian Electronic Army in recent months. The supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime have duped numerous Western media outlets into handing over the electronic keys to their Facebook, Twitter and other accounts, leaving many organisations red-faced and scrambling to regain control of their social media streams.
The group’s aim: to spread counter-revolutionary propaganda and hit back at news outlets it says slant their reporting of the conflict that began in March 2011 and has so far claimed an estimated 94,000 lives and displaced millions more.
‘We have literally hacked the planet when it comes to news organisations,’ a spokesman for the group told AFP in an email exchange. ‘There only remains a few untouched social media targets that we fully intend to pay a visit to soon.’
All sides in Syria’s war have used social media to try to drum up support and document atrocities being inflicted on an almost daily basis. Opposition groups were quick to build Facebook pages and post videos depicting gruesome acts by regime forces, but the Syrian Electronic Army - or SEA, as it calls itself - has pushed back in the high-stakes battle to shape public opinion in the West.
The most notorious hack was of The Associated Press’s Twitter stream, resulting in a false tweet saying President Barack Obama had been injured after two blasts at the White House. The message saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffer a ‘flash crash’ before traders realised the tweet was false.
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