Hackers purportedly from the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the International Business Times website on Wednesday after an article highlighted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is struggling with a flailing army and anti-regime sentiments.
IBTimes became the latest target of the Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-Assad group, after it recently claimed to have hacked into websites of The Telegraph, Forbes, CNBC and other media organisations, and even those of technology giants like Microsoft and Dell.
The SEA pulled down the article The Syrian Army Is Shrinking, And Assad Is Running Out Of Soldiers and replaced it with an article headlined 'Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army' after accessing the internal publishing platform. The original article has since been put up on the website.
The SEA also left behind a message on the site that read – 'This time we only deleted the article that content false information about Syria and the Syrian army. Next time, we will delete all your website (sic)'.
The hackers tampered with other sections on the website's homepage, overwriting the 'Hacked by SEA' message on news columns.
The hackers publicised their deed on their Twitter account.
Little message to @IBTimes http://t.co/nrqCG47ggz http://t.co/bIYINc73zo #SEA #SyrianElectronicArmy pic.twitter.com/OuMaJwBbP7
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) December 17, 2014
The report that seems to have irked the SEA was about the dwindling Syrian Army, whose strength has come down from 3,25,000 to about 1,50,000 , according to the Institute for the Study of War.
The SEA is known for its cyber attacks against what it claims is 'biased' and 'fabricated' news in Arab and Western media against the Syrian regime.
It is known to have tampered with the Twitter account of US President Barack Obama last year and had also targeted Skype.
