The list of Western media outlets that haven’t had their Twitter account defaced by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is seemingly shrinking by the day.
And you can now take off the Telegraph
The SEA briefly took control of, by its own account, eight Telegraph Twitter accounts and the British newspaper’s Facebook page early Monday evening.
Whatever the SEA posted was removed in less than two hours. The only lingering evidence of the hack is simply a huge gap between posts across the different channels, along with a single apology from the Telegraph Books account:
Our Twitter account has been hacked. Apologies for any odd messages.
— Telegraph Books (@TelegraphBooks) May 20, 2013
A blurry screengrab shows that the Telegraph’s main account posted at least three SEA messages. Two were allegations that Syrian rebels committed atrocities; the third simply said “the Syrian Electronic Army was here.”
The SEA didn’t immediately respond to request for comment about the hacks, but it’s not hard to imagine its motivation. SEA has loose ties to President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which is still fighting a vicious civil war with rebels.
The hacker group has, in obtaining control of nearly a dozen major news outlets’ social media arms over the past few months, consistently criticized Syrian rebels and any perceived favorable coverage they’ve received. It’s been less consistent in its exact message. When it attacked the Onion, it made jokes; when it attacked NPR, the SEA was clearly angry about the station’s coverage; when it attacked the AP, its fake message of an attack on the White House caused a brief dip in the Dow.
Photo via @Official_SEA12/Twitter
