Syrian Electronic Army hacks and defaces CNN’s social network accounts & blogs

The Syrian Electronic Army are at it again. After the endless barrage of attacks on Microsoft’s social networking account and blogs, their latest victims are the popular news network, CNN.

Several accounts belonging to the new giant were hacked yesterday, with the SEA claiming it was in retaliation  for  CNN’s "viciously lying reporting aimed at prolonging the suffering in Syria."

The list of compromised accounts and blogs include Facebook accounts of CNN, CNN Politics, and Twitter accounts of CNN and CNN's Security Clearance,  Blogs for Political Ticker, The Lead, Security Clearance, The Situation Room and Crossfire.

The official Twitter account of the network @CNN was broken into and defaced by SEA with a number of tweets, including one signature tweet reading “Syrian Electronic Army was here”, while one tweet called the U.S President as “Obama Bin Laden the lord of terror”.

The Security Clearance blog was defaced with fake news about the U.S declaring a state of national emergency. The SEA also tweeted about the same from the Security Clearance’s Twitter account, @natlsecuritycnn.

While the Political Ticker blog carried more fake news, this time about China declaring the South China Sea a closed zone in retaliation for U.S aggression.

CNN’s Public Relations’ Twitter account posted the following message,

Some of our organization's social media accounts were compromised. We have secured those accounts and are working to remedy the issue.

— CNN Public Relations (@CNNPR) January 23, 2014

The SEA’s official Twitter handle posted the following tweets,

The SEA had tormented Microsoft, accusing them of working with the NSA and selling user’s data. The compromised list of Microsoft accounts and blogs include Skype’s Twitter and Facebook accounts & blog, Microsoft XBOX Support’s Twitter account, Microsoft News’ Twitter account & TechNet blogs, and Microsoft Employees’ email accounts.

Interestingly, the SEA themselves were victims to a recent hack, when a Turkish hacking group, TurkGuvenligi, defaced the website of the Syrian Electronic Army. The incident turned uglier when the two parties took to Twitter, and exchanged a number of abusive tweets. The Syrians refused to acknowledge the attack, stating that only their server host was hacked, and no personal information had been stolen.

It is very much frightening that the SEA can breach into Twitter and Facebook accounts with such ease. Clearly the two social networks need to step up on their security measures.

Image Credits & news source: Buzzfeed and CNN.