Pierluigi Paganini February 14, 2014

The Syrian Electronic Army has hacked Forbes WordPress CMS and has hijacked Twitter accounts belonging to the media agency. Who will be the next one?

Forbes is the new victim of the popular group of hackers Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), the popular group pro Syrian President Assad. The hackers took responsibility for a coordinated attack against multiple websites belonging to media agency, they also hijacked three Twitter accounts to spread propaganda messages.

The group hacked Forbes because it published many articles against the SEA  and more in general against the Syrian Regime, SEA tweeted from the compromised accounts  of Social media editor Alex Knapp @TheAlexKnapp and @Samsharf, and @ForbesTech account.

No one  seems to be able to protect their systems from the  Syrian Electronic Army, one after the other, the principal actors of IT landscape have collapsed under the Syrian offensive, including PayPal, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, and many others.

Examining the screenshots posted by the members of  the Syrian Electronic Army it is possible to note that hackers violated the administration panel of the WordPress CMS used by Forbes. The access to the administration panel allowed the attackers to edit numerous articles, they modified many posts of popular Forbes authors Travis Bradberry, Matthew Herper, Andy Greenberg, John Dobosz, Steve Forbes.

The posts appeared with the titled “Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army“.

In time I’m writing the website returned normal, a spokesperson from the company has confirmed that the official website was compromised and that it is “working to resolve the issue.”

The group also revealed that it will publish the database as soon as the SEA finds a secure host to upload the database on it.

“Forbes users table(1,071,963 user-email-password) was dumped successfully, Anyone want to buy it? pic.twitter.com/QniuVosvcM“

 

Who is the next?

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –  Forbes hacked, Syrian Electronic Army)