Categories: Hacking

The Syrian Electronic Army hacked Forbes

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.

The Syrian Electronic Army attacked Forbes because, “Many articles against the SEA were posted on Forbes, also their hate for Syria is very clear and flagrant in their articles.”.

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)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.