Syrian Electronic Army Hacks Telegraph’s Facebook And Twitter Feeds

Hacker group strikes again, just days after it hit the FT

The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed yet another scalp in its ongoing war on media organisations, this time hacking the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the Daily Telegraph.

Having already hit the BBC, the Guardian, Al-Jazeera and the FT, which was hacked at the end of last week, the Syrian Electronic Army posted messages from the social media feeds of the Telegraph yesterday evening.

Barbwire and grey wall with Syria national flag © Valeriy - FotoliaSyrian Electronic Army at it again

On the Facebook page, a post claimed Prime Minister David Cameron had held a fundraiser “for the terrorists in Syria”. Tweets from @TelegraphNews pushed the usual message: “Syrian Electronic Army Was Here.”

The Army said it had also compromised a host of other Telegraph Twitter accounts, including  @TeleTheatre, @TelegraphOpera, @TelegraphArt, @TelegraphFilm, @Tele_Comedy, @TelegraphSport, and @TelegraphBooks, according to Sophos’ Graham Cluley.

The messages have now been removed. The Telegraph had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

“What’s clear is that someone at The Telegraph was a little careless about their computer security and – most likely – managed to get phished by the Syrian Electronic Army,” Cluley wrote in a blog post.

“The hackers were then able to use stolen passwords to access the newspaper’s social media accounts.

“One suspects that it’s not just media organisations who are failing to find the funny side of the Syrian Electronic Army’s hacks, but Twitter also. After all, every time a high profile account gets hacked questions are asked as to whether the micro-blogging site is doing enough to secure the accounts of important world-famous brands.”

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