New York Times hacked, attack credited to Syrian Electronic Army

The New York Times website was down for two hours for some readers on Tuesday. The newspaper credits the attack to the Syrian Electronic Army.

Earlier today, the Times issued a statement on Facebook, confirming that the site was down and provided links to ongoing news coverage. “Our initial assessment is the outage is most likely the result of a malicious external attack,” the Times said.

Later, the Times did confirm that Marc Frons, chief information officer for The New York Times Company, sent a statement to staffers crediting the external attack to “the Syrian Electronic Army or someone trying very hard to be them.”

Readers have been told to go to an alternate site to view new material from Times reporters.

According to The Washington Post, the Syrian Electronic Army also claimed today that it hacked Twitter, a claim that the social networking site is looking into. Deadline also notes that the group claims that it hacked the Huffington Post.

The group’s Twitter page is still active and continues to post new messages, mostly showing support for Bashar Al-Assad, the leader that groups are rebelling against.

SEA hacked the Washington Post site on Aug. 15 and also tried to attack CNN. The day before, the Times said that its site was down due to an “internal problem,” notes the Post.