Hacker group the Syrian Electronic Army “took over” the domain name of Twitter yesterday as it unleashed a series of cyber attacks on news organisations.

The group, which supports the regime of President Assad, also claimed successful attacks on the New York Times and Huffington Post on Tuesday.

Last night, Twitter’s status blog confirmed that its “DNS (domain name system) provider experienced an issue in which it appears DNS records for various organisations were modified, including one of Twitter’s domains used for image serving”.

The SEA’s own Twitter feed warned of the attacks by posting a message saying “Media is going down”.

According to The Independent, the New York Times confirmed that its site was disrupted by a “malicious external attack”, which briefly caused visitors to get error messages when accessing web pages.

A hacker purporting to be from the SEA told Associated Press that the attacks came about after the group hijacked an Australian-based company called Melbourne IT which registered domain names for both Twitter and the New York Times.

“I can’t say how, but yes we did hit Melbourne IT,” the hacker told AP.

The SEA has undertaken a series of attacks on the websites or Twitter accounts of western media organisations in recent months. These include the BBC, The Guardian, Sky News, the Financial Times and the Washington Post.

Source: PressGazette.co.uk


Watchguard Firebox T70 Network Security/Firewall With Power Adapter cord K42 picture

Watchguard Firebox T70 Network Security/Firewall With Power Adapter cord K42

$139.00



WATCHGUARD FIREFOX T35 MS3AE5 FIREWALL picture

WATCHGUARD FIREFOX T35 MS3AE5 FIREWALL

$40.00



WatchGuard 4RE in Car Camera picture

WatchGuard 4RE in Car Camera

$500.00



WatchGuard XTM 5 Series XTM 525 Firewall Security Appliance NC2AE8 picture

WatchGuard XTM 5 Series XTM 525 Firewall Security Appliance NC2AE8

$65.00



WatchGuard Firebox T20 w/ 3YR Standard Support UNREG(WGT20003-WW)-Open Box picture

WatchGuard Firebox T20 w/ 3YR Standard Support UNREG(WGT20003-WW)-Open Box

$180.00



WatchGuard Firebox M290 Network Security/Firewall Appliance CL2AE8 picture

WatchGuard Firebox M290 Network Security/Firewall Appliance CL2AE8

$699.00



WatchGuard Firebox T30 BS3AE5 Firewall Security Appliance picture

WatchGuard Firebox T30 BS3AE5 Firewall Security Appliance

$29.99



WatchGuard Firebox M400 KL5AE8 Network Security Appliance Tested Working picture

WatchGuard Firebox M400 KL5AE8 Network Security Appliance Tested Working

$94.99



WatchGuard Firebox T30 BS3AE5 Firewall Security Appliance picture

WatchGuard Firebox T30 BS3AE5 Firewall Security Appliance

$36.10



WatchGuard NC2AE8 XTM 5 Series 525 Network Firewall picture

WatchGuard NC2AE8 XTM 5 Series 525 Network Firewall

$68.84