The Syrian Electronic Army isn’t wasting any time in the New Year. On Wednesday, the group managed to hack into the Facebook account, Twitter account and blog of Skype to spread their anti-spying propaganda on the web.
Yesterday afternoon, Skype’s Twitter account published a tweet suggesting people shouldn’t use Microsoft e-mail programs because they monitor accounts and sell data to governments. A very similar message was also retweeted from the SEA’s Twitter account.
The same message also briefly appeared on Skype’s Facebook page although it was short-lived. Two additional posts cropped up on the company’s official blog as well. One was titled “Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.. Stop Spying!” while the other was similar to the messages that appeared on Twitter.
Later in the day, Skype reached out to news publications with a statement on the matter. It said they recently became aware of a targeted cyber attack that led to access to their social media properties but the credentials were quickly reset. What’s more, no user information was compromised in the breach.
Skype was likely targeted following a July report that suggested the Microsoft-owned company allowed the NSA to intercept communications from those using the program.
The Syrian Electronic Army, a group loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, typically spews pro-government propaganda in their attacks. Last year, the group was responsible for hacking the websites or Twitter accounts of the Washington Post, Tango, the Associated Press, CBS, E! Online, The Financial Times and The Onion, just to name a few.
