The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a group of hackers believed to be loosely affiliated with the Syrian government, launched a Thanksgiving day widespread cyber attack on major news sites, including the Los Angeles Times, UK Daily Telegraph, Forbes, and others.
The black hats also hit companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Ferrari, and UNICEF. Reportedly, no personal data was stolen from the sites’ independent users.
The SEA cyber attackers utilized the commenting and sharing platform of U.S. company Gigya to access the domain registrars of those companies. They then redirected web traffic to a new website which read, “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA),” and showcased the group’s logo.
Gigya CEO Patrick Salyer commented on the matter: “To be absolutely clear: neither Gigya’s platform itself nor any user, administrator or operational data has been compromised and was never at risk of being compromised,” he said. “Rather, the attack only served other JavaScript files instead of those served by Gigya,” added Salyer.
The Syrian Electronic Army, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has been very active in cyber-space over recent years. Some have gone as far as to allege that the group is “state-supported.” They have previously claimed to have hacked prominent sites, such as PayPal and Ebay, as well as U.S. President Barack Obama’s Twitter account.