The US Army’s official website was hacked with messages
denouncing Washington’s training of rebel fighters inside Syria, but no data
was stolen, officials said.
As a result of the hacking, the Army decided to temporarily
shut down the website, which is designed for the general public with basic
information and does not contain classified or personal data, officials said.
“Your commanders admit they are training the people they have
sent you to die fighting,” said one of the messages.
The so-called “Syrian Electronic Army” took credit for the
cyber hack, and posted the messages on its Twitter account. The group has been
blamed for previous hacking and denial of service attacks that have condemned
rebel forces fighting the Syrian regime.
“Today an element of the Army.mil service provider’s content
was compromised,” army spokesman Brigadier General Malcolm Frost said in a
statement.
“After this came to our attention, the Army took appropriate
preventive measures to ensure there was no breach of Army data by taking down
the website temporarily,” Frost said.
The pro-Syrian regime group has been linked to the hacking of
numerous news media sites in recent years, including the Twitter account of
AFP’s photo service.
It created confusion in the stock market briefly in 2013 when
it put out a fake media tweet falsely claiming the White House was under
attack.
Officials said it was possibly the first time a US military
website had been penetrated, as previous hacking had targeted Twitter accounts.
The social media accounts of US Central Command, which
oversees American forces in the Middle East, were hacked in January with
messages promoting the Islamic State group. Central Command’s Twitter and
YouTube accounts were temporarily suspended as a result but no sensitive data
was compromised.
US officials had called the assault on the CENTCOM Twitter
cyber “vandalism.”
The hack on the Army’s website came days after a cyber
assault may have compromised the personal information of four million US government
workers.
US officials and lawmakers said they suspected China was
behind the breach.
Source: Business Insider
No comments:
Post a Comment