The Syrian Electronic Army, the notorious hacker group which claims to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claims to have hacked Forbes.com website Friday and made off with more than one million user credentials. The group also posted a story titled "Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army" under cyber security correspondent Andy Greenberg's byline, and shared a screenshot of the site's publishing system on Twitter.
According to Re/Code, the data published by the hacker group contains names and e-mail addresses of several current and former employees at Forbes. The passwords, however, aren’t shown in plain text, and are displayed as hashes instead.
While the business magazine confirmed the attack, it did not disclose the number of user accounts that were compromised. “Forbes.com’s publishing platform was compromised. We’re taking this matter very seriously”, a Forbes spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement. The website has also asked its users to immediately change their passwords and beware of phishing attacks.
A USAToday report highlights that many Twitter accounts, including that of Alex Knapp, the social media manager for the Forbes website, and Samantha Sharf, a personal finance/markets reporter for the business magazine, were also hijacked. As per the report, the website was accessed through Knapp's Twitter account.
According to an e-mail sent by the hacker group to The International Business Times, Forbe's "hate for Syria is very clear and flagrant in their articles," and that is the reason they targeted the publication. The group has already targeted several big name news organizations including The Washington Post and The New York Times.
