#1 Trusted Cybersecurity News Platform Followed by 4.50+ million
The Hacker News Logo
Get the Free Newsletter
SaaS Security

Search results for Syrian Electronic Army | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

SEANux — Syrian Electronic Army To Release its Own Linux-based Distribution

SEANux — Syrian Electronic Army To Release its Own Linux-based Distribution

Oct 13, 2014
Lots of Linux distributions are offered free of cost on the Internet by a number of companies, non-commercial organizations and by many individuals as well, and now, the notorious Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has announced their own Linux distribution known as SEANux . A Linux distribution is a coordinated collection of software consisting of a customized version of the kernel together with hundreds of open source (i.e., free) utilities, installers, programming languages and application programs. Some of the most popular distributions are Fedora (formerly Red Hat), SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Kali Linux, Tails OS and Mint Linux. SEA (Syrian Electronic Army) is the same group of hackers who made the headlines in past year by launching advance phishing attacks against media organisations, usually Western media outlets. The group is reportedly aligned with president Bashar al-Assad and had purposely targeted social media accounts of a number of high-profile media outlets inclu
'The Onion' Twitter Account Hacked via Phishing Attack

'The Onion' Twitter Account Hacked via Phishing Attack

May 12, 2013
The hacktivist group Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) briefly took over the Twitter account of the satirical news publication The Onion, posting a series of anti-Israeli joke stories and an anti-Obama meme image. In a post on The Onion tech team's GitHub blog , the fake news site explains that the Syrian Electronic Army didn't wrestle control of its Twitter account using some advanced hacker scheme. The hack attack penetrated the publication with at least three methods of phishing attacks, where a false e-mail redirected people to a fake Website which then asked for Google Apps credentials. Previously the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has shanghaied its way into the official Twitter feeds of AP and the Guardian, using the former to post a tweet falsely claiming that there had been an explosion at the white House. Exposing details about an attack is not the normal approach companies take after they are hacked. The New York Times revealed earlier this year how Chinese hackers breac
How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

Mar 21, 2024SaaS Security / Endpoint Security
In today's digital-first business environment dominated by SaaS applications, organizations increasingly depend on third-party vendors for essential cloud services and software solutions. As more vendors and services are added to the mix, the complexity and potential vulnerabilities within the  SaaS supply chain  snowball quickly. That's why effective vendor risk management (VRM) is a critical strategy in identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to protect organizational assets and data integrity. Meanwhile, common approaches to vendor risk assessments are too slow and static for the modern world of SaaS. Most organizations have simply adapted their legacy evaluation techniques for on-premise software to apply to SaaS providers. This not only creates massive bottlenecks, but also causes organizations to inadvertently accept far too much risk. To effectively adapt to the realities of modern work, two major aspects need to change: the timeline of initial assessment must shorte
Massive Database from Tango messenger server hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

Massive Database from Tango messenger server hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

Jul 20, 2013
Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), hacking group known for cyber attacks against the anti-Syrian websites, has claimed that it has hacked the website of messaging application, Tango (tango.me), that includes hundreds of millions of electronic and voice data over the Internet. Hacker group tweeted a message on Twitter. " Sorry @TangoMe, We needed your database too, thank you for it! https://tango.me #SEA #SyrianElectronicArmy ". In a post on their website , hackers mentioned ," The databases content a of millions of the app user's phone numbers, contacts and their emails. More than 1.5 TB of the daily-backups of the servers network has been downloaded successfully " Screenshot of the backups folder of the servers network of Tango App as shown below: Screenshot of the Tango App log : The outdated version of wordpress CMS allowed them to gain unauthorized access to the database server. At the time of reporting, administrators redirect the website t
cyber security

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.
Syrian Electronic Army Hijacks The Guardian's Twitter Accounts

Syrian Electronic Army Hijacks The Guardian's Twitter Accounts

Apr 30, 2013
The Guardian's Twitter accounts have been taken over by pro-Syrian government hackers ' Syrian Electronic Army ' , who previously targeted the Associated Press BBC , al-Jazeera, the Qatari government and National Public Radio in the United States, as well as France 24 TV. " We are aware that a number of Guardian Twitter accounts have been compromised and we are working actively to resolve this ," a Guardian spokesperson said. Nine bogus tweets were broadcast in an hour, including some with anti-Israeli sentiments, and others saying " Long Live Syria " and " Syrian Electronic Army Was Here ".  Cyber-security experts believe the SEA have targeted a series of western media organisations in an apparent attempt to cause disruption and spread support for President Bashar al-Assad's regime, which has been under increasing Western pressure to end an ongoing bloody civil war in Syria. The group's domain names were apparently registered by the Syr
5 Biggest Hosting Companies hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

5 Biggest Hosting Companies hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

Mar 30, 2015
Once again, Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has gain media attention by compromising a number of popular web hosting brands of one of the leading web-hosting companies Endurance International Group INC that manages over 60 different hosting brands. SEA, a pro-hacker group supposed to be aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is famous for hacking high-profile websites and targeting leading organisation with its advanced phishing attacks. This time the group hacked Endurance Group wings, including Bluehost, Justhost, Hostgator, Hostmonster and FastDomain, which are some of the world's leading web hosting companies. The official Twitter account linked to SEA group claimed responsibility for the hack. The group has posted the screenshots of the hacked panels of all the respective web hosting companies. REASON BEHIND HACK According to SEA group, Endurance Group's BlueHost, JustHost, HostGator and HostMonster were hosting terrorists web sites on their se
Syrian Electronic Army Hijack Sky News's Twitter & Facebook Accounts

Syrian Electronic Army Hijack Sky News's Twitter & Facebook Accounts

Feb 07, 2013
Syrian Electronic Army strike again! This time hacking group hijack Twitter accounts and a Facebook page of Sky News Arabia and also hack their Emails. The accounts affected were the channel's main twitter handle @skynewsarabia and the @skynewsarabia account used for cultural and entertainment news, as well as the Facebook page facebook/skynewsarabia . Sky News regained control of the hacked accounts some how later. During an Interview with hackers at Syrian Electronic Army, hackers said that they first target Sky News's Email panel which is using Outlook Web App. Below is the screenshot of hacked inbox: Then it was too easy for hackers to reset the password of Twitter accounts and Facebook pages attached to that mail using Password forget option. Hackers said, they attack because of the bias that the foreign media has against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and their support for the rebels in the Syrian conflict.
Microsoft charges FBI for your Information; Syrian Electronic Army leaks Invoices

Microsoft charges FBI for your Information; Syrian Electronic Army leaks Invoices

Mar 21, 2014
Till now we all were aware about the truth that tech companies gave legal access to user data on the government's request, but we were unaware that well known tech companies also charge the government for providing data. Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , the pro-hacker group, who had compromised Microsoft's Twitter account and blog, earlier this year and Microsoft did announce a breach on its blog earlier this year. " It appears that documents associated with law enforcement inquiries were stolen ,". It seems that they have achieved something bigger than we expected by once more targeting Microsoft. This time the SEA hacking group has managed to successfully get into the FBI's super-secret Digital Intercept Technology Unit (DITU), where they found the actual invoices from Microsoft; detailing how much each request for data cost, which means that the company charges for every document they provide to the FBI agents, Daily Dot reported. The invoic
Syrian Electronic Army's own website got hacked by Turkish hacker

Syrian Electronic Army's own website got hacked by Turkish hacker

Jan 14, 2014
Oops.. Hackers got Hacked! The Syrian Electronic Army , who has hacked hundreds of High Profile targets in 2013-14, today they got hacked by a Turkish hacker. Turkguvenligi , a Turkish hacker told The Hacker News that he hacked and defaced the official website of the hacking group SEA ( sea . sy  and  leaks . sea . sy ). SEA Group has taken down many serious targets like Microsoft, Obama & New York Times' twitter accounts & websites in the past, but today their own server got breached. The most common hacking technique used by the SEA Group is Phishing , but the Turkguvenligi hacked then using an exploit known for vulnerabilities in the server or website. At the time of writing this news, the whole website of SEA was down, but our readers can see the defacement mirror on Zone-H . Turkguvenligi tagged SEA in a  tweet , says " hi guys, you have been hacked ": The Syrian Electronic Army group has not commented anything about the hack, but We'll keep you upd
New York Times, Twitter and Huffington Post Domains hijacked by Syrian Electronic Army

New York Times, Twitter and Huffington Post Domains hijacked by Syrian Electronic Army

Aug 28, 2013
Media companies including the New York Times, Twitter and the Huffington Post has been unavailable since Tuesday after the external malicious attack by a group of hackers supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad. For the second time this month, the New York Times' website has gone down. " The New York Times website was unavailable to readers on Tuesday afternoon following an attack on the company's domain name registrar, Melbourne IT ," the Times wrote. In its most recent alleged attack, SEA was apparently able to use what's called a spear phishing attack to gain access to the Australia-based domain registrar for The New York Times website and read: " Hacked by SEA, Your server security is very weak ." It appears the domain name system (DNS) for NYTimes.com was rerouted, but can be found using its numerical Internet Protocol addresses, which is 170.149.168.130. The New York Times website has been restored just now, at least temporarily a
Hacked Twitter account of The Associated Press posted bogus report of attack at White House

Hacked Twitter account of The Associated Press posted bogus report of attack at White House

Apr 23, 2013
The Associated Press Twitter account has been hacked,and posted a bogus post about explosions at the White House and Barack Obama is injured. Within a few minutes, Twitter suspended the account, and Julie Pace, the chief White House correspondent for The A.P., announced at a White House briefing that the account had been hacked. " The president is fine ," spokesman Jay Carney said. " I was just with him. " AP said later: " The @AP twitter account has been hacked. The tweet about an attack at the White House is false. " The Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsibility, tweeting out: " Ops! @AP get owned by Syrian Electronic Army! #SEA #Syria #ByeByeObama. " Last year, it took over Twitter and Facebook accounts of the Al Arabiya news channel to spread fake news of a coup and explosion in Qatar, which sides with the Syrian rebels. Shortly after the account was suspended, Mike Baker, a reporter for the news organization, posted a messa
New Mac OS Malware exploited two known Java vulnerabilities

New Mac OS Malware exploited two known Java vulnerabilities

Sep 24, 2013
A new Mac OS Malware has been discovered called OSX/Leverage . A , which appears to be yet another targeted command-and-control Trojan horse, that creates a backdoor on an affected user's machine. The Trojan named ' Leverage ' because the Trojan horse is distributed as an application disguised as a picture of two people kissing, possibly a scene from the television show " Leverage ". The attack launched via a Java applet from a compromised website and which drops a Java archive with the backdoor to the visitor's computer and launches it without a user intercation. To perform the attack, Malware uses two recently disclosed Java vulnerabilies  known as CVE-2013-2465 and CVE-2013-2471. Once it's installed, the Trojan connects to the C&C server on port 7777. Security vendor Intego said that Malware linked to Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , because after installation Malware attempt to download an image associated with the Syrian Electronic A
Turkish PM Erdogan’s staff emails hacked and leaked by Syrian Electronic Army Hackers as #OpTurkey

Turkish PM Erdogan's staff emails hacked and leaked by Syrian Electronic Army Hackers as #OpTurkey

Jun 05, 2013
Syrian Electronic army appears to be taking part in ongoing operation against Turkey government website. Hackers collectively called Anonymous and SEA breached into Turkish Ministry of Interior website and the private information of staffers in PM Tayyip Erdogan's office. Hackers claimed that they gained access to staff email addresses, passwords and phone numbers. As exposed on internet, database include emails and plain text passwords of 90 users. In addition , Hackers also managed to take down the Turkey's Prime Minister (basbakanlik.gov.tr) website. Many other sites belongs to Turkish govt was defaced last night by various hackers around the world including the country's ruling party as operation #OpTurkey. The team also defaced the  dosya.icisleri.gov.tr/Dosyalar/  and placed their logo on site. " Rise against the injustice of Erdogan's Tyranny. Rise against the policies of hypocrisy perpetrated by the Erdogan Regime ." The defacement message reads
Millions of Phonebook records stolen from Truecaller Database

Millions of Phonebook records stolen from Truecaller Database

Jul 17, 2013
TrueCaller, a popular app built by a Swedish company and world's largest collaborative phone directory compromised by Syrian Electronic Army hackers. Truecaller was running an outdated version (3.5.1) of blogging software WordPress for its web interface and there are millions of Phonebook records available in their database that were reportedly stolen by hackers, as claimed on their twitter account. Syrian Electronic Army also claimed that the database contains million of access codes of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Gmail Accounts of different users, that can be used to post update from compromised Accounts. In total, the hackers claimed to downloaded more than 7 databases fro Truecaller server of 450GB in size. At the time of reporting this news, Truecaller website is still under maintenance and index page saying, " We are doing some upgrades. Thank you for your patience ." SEA also posted a database screenshot on twitter, showing the phonebook l
Facebook Bans Pakistani and Syrian Hacker Groups for Abusing its Platform

Facebook Bans Pakistani and Syrian Hacker Groups for Abusing its Platform

Nov 17, 2021
Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, announced Tuesday that it took action against four separate malicious cyber groups from Pakistan and Syria who were found targeting people in Afghanistan, as well as journalists, humanitarian organizations, and anti-regime military forces in the West Asian country. The Pakistani threat actor, dubbed  SideCopy , is said to have used the platform to single out people with ties to the Afghan government, military and law enforcement in Kabul. The campaign, which Meta dubbed as a "well-resourced and persistent operation," involved sending malicious links, often shortened using URL shortener services, to websites hosting malware between April and August of 2021, what with the operators posing as young women and tricking the recipients with romantic lures in a bid to make them click on phishing links or download trojanized chat applications. Meta's threat intelligence analysts said these apps were a front for two distinct malwa
Outdated version of WordPress leads to MasterCard Hack

Outdated version of WordPress leads to MasterCard Hack

Jan 09, 2013
On tip of a readers, yesterday we came across a new MasterCard hack, performed by  Syrian Electronic Army . Hackers was able to breach MasterCard Blog ( https://insights.mastercard.com ) and make a new blog post on the website with title " Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army " on January 5, 2013. For now MasterCard deleted that post, but readers can check Google cache . Today we tried to contact the hacker, but may be they are busy in Hacking Next Target , I started my investigation that how they can hack such a big economic website's blog. Starting from very first step, Information gathering about your target. Simple by reviewing the source code we found that MasterCard blog is using Wordpress. We all know, WordPress is particular a popular attack vector for cyber criminals. To know this, I just tried to access the readme.html file of CMS , that's it - MasterCard #fail ! They are using an old  Wordpress 3.3.2  version, instead of the current version 3.
Syrian Hackers Deface AnonPlus - Anonymous Social Network

Syrian Hackers Deface AnonPlus - Anonymous Social Network

Aug 09, 2011
Syrian Hackers Deface AnonPlus - Anonymous Social Network After the hacking gang Anonymous took credit for defacing Syria's Ministry of Defense website , a Syrian group retaliated on Monday by posting gruesome photos on Anonymous embryonic social network. The defacement of AnonPlus (https://anonplus.com/), the site Anonymous set up last month when it was booted off Google+ — did not include the name of the group responsible. The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, however, credited the AnonPlus defacement to the ' Syrian Electronic Army ' in a message posted to Twitter. ' In response to your hacking to the website of the Syrian Ministry of Defence, the Syrian people have decided to purify the internet of [y]our pathetic website ,' the defacement read Where as Anonymous Claim that, AnonPlus is not their any Official site. Lulzsec leader Sabu tweet  " Turns out people were correct: anonplus.com was a troll domain. Belongs to "fro" aka "cnap
Fake Syria News Posted from Hacked Reuters blog and Twitter account

Fake Syria News Posted from Hacked Reuters blog and Twitter account

Aug 06, 2012
On Friday, Reuters blog platform was hacked with false posts and on Saturday, the @ReutersTech account on Twitter was taken over and renamed @TechMe. False tweets were sent before it was taken down. The first attack came Friday after Syrian hackers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad allegedly gained access to Reuters' blogging platform, which they used to post a fake interview with rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) leader Riad al-Assad. The interview essentially said the general was withdrawing troops after a battle. Presumably, the same hackers are responsible for also compromising a Reuters Twitter account dedicated to technology news, which has about 17,500 followers. Reuters confirmed the breach today in a tweet on its main Twitter account: Earlier today @ReutersTech was hacked and changed to @ReutersME. The account has been suspended and is currently under investigation Several of the updates posted on the hacked Reuters account, which claimed that rebels in the city of Aleppo had
#OpIsrael - 7 APRIL Anonymous calls to army for massive attack against Israel

#OpIsrael - 7 APRIL Anonymous calls to army for massive attack against Israel

Apr 06, 2013
We are on the eve of the fateful day, April 7th , the collective of Anonymous announced a massive cyber attack against the state of Israel as part of the campaign started in the last months and named #OpIsrael . The hacktivists are conducting a massive call to army to recruit new forces and inform all the members of collective of the cyber attack planned against Israeli network infrastructures. The hacktivists protest against Israeli bombing of Palestinian territory expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people condemning Israeli Government and its decisions.  The hackers motivated to The Hackers Post website their participation with following statement: " Israel isn't stopping human rights violations. It's to show solidarity with newly recognized Palestinian state." "the hacking teams have decided to unite against Israel as one entity…Israel should be getting prepared to be erased from the internet. " Anonymous has promised to ' erase Israel from the internet ' in a coordin
Al Jazeera news network hacked by Syrian Hackers

Al Jazeera news network hacked by Syrian Hackers

Feb 13, 2012
Al Jazeera  news network hacked by Syrian Hackers Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera 's website was hacked last week by a Syrian hacktivist group in support of the government's actions in the country. Aljazeera is broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Initially launched as an Arabic news and current affairs satellite TV channel, Al Jazeera has since expanded into a network with several outlets, including the Internet and specialty TV channels in multiple languages. Al Jazeera is accessible in several world regions. Hackers from cyria " ThePro " again hit aljazeera network They claim to hack the one of the network and post list ofemail and passwrds of aljazeera.  The Syrian Electronic Army is a collection of young Syrians, angry about the way the media and other sources are portraying the fighting in their country. They call it a " massive distortion of facts". Al Jazeera hosts a live blog c
Harvard University website hacked by Syria protesters

Harvard University website hacked by Syria protesters

Sep 27, 2011
Harvard University website hacked by Syria protesters Syrian hackers have hit the website of Harvard University, one of America's top universities, Itar-tass reports. Along with a picture of Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, the hacked home page showed a message saying the "Syrian Electronic Army Were Here". "The university's homepage was compromised by an outside party this morning. We took down the site for several hours in order to restore it. The attack appears to have been the work of a sophisticated individual or group," said a Harvard spokesman. They also criticized US policy towards President Assad`s regime and wrote several threats to the US. The new design stayed on the website for nearly an hour.
Cybersecurity Resources