In just latest of many head-turning exploits, the Syrian Electronic Army now says it’s broken into Barack Obama’s Twitter account and website. Indeed, the hacker organisation showed images of the website’s backend and Obama campaign email accounts.
While the Obama Twitter account hasn’t gone wild (as with other attacks), there is at least one tweet that points to a graphically violent SEA video on YouTube. (Update 2pm: The link now appears to be fixed.) The SEA reportedly confirmed the hacks in an email to Mashable. The report said that all of Obama’s Facebook links pointed to SEA videos as well, but the page appeared to be unaffected when we looked at it. Finally, according to Hacker News, the SEA reportedly broke into Obama’s donation site before the social media hacks and redirected it to a site of their own.
The hackers have also managed to redirect part of Obama’s website — OFA.BO/SEA — to the Syrian Electronic Army’s website. The extent of the hack is, otherwise, unclear, as the SEA seems to be livetweeting its exploits. “Obama doesn’t have any ethical issues with spying on the world, so we took it upon ourselves to return the favour,” the groups said after tweeting out the hacked links. We’ll keep an eye on the latest and update you as we go. [SEA]
The screenshot attached to this tweet appears to show the backend of the Obama campaign’s web tools:
We are watching you, Obama Bin Laden #SEA #SyrianElectronicArmy pic.twitter.com/N0M7cGIOwq
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) October 28, 2013
This screenshot appears to show the Gmail inbox of Obama organiser Suzanne Snurpus:
We accessed many Obama campaign emails accounts to assess his terrorism capabilities. They are quite high #SEApic.twitter.com/ARgGLX8IjN
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) October 28, 2013
Update 2:15 p.m.: Quartz confirmed the hack with Snurpus who says she and other organisers “taken measures to correct it” and have “all changed our passwords and added an extra layer of login security.” For a time on Monday, all of the links shortened by Obama for America redirected to the SEA’s video.
Update 2:45 p.m.: The latest dispatch from the other end of SEA’s Twitter account chides Obama for not paying his bills on time:
Obama spent so much money ravaging #Syria with terror, he can’t even pay his bills pic.twitter.com/dMEj8uFGGI
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) October 28, 2013