The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) hacked news sites CNN, The Washington Post and Time redirecting visitors to their website instead.
The BBC reports that the three sites are blaming issues on a third-party link recommendation service that the news websites used. The service provided by Outbrain was disabled while they fixed the issue and the company said, “We are aware that Outbrain was hacked earlier today and we took down service as soon as it was apparent.”
CNN told the BBC that “The security of a vendor plug-in that appeared on CNNi.com was briefly compromised today.” They continued, “The issue was quickly identified and plug-in disabled. Neither CNN.com or CNNi.com were penetrated directly.”
According to The New York Times, on the SEA Twitter, they were claiming responsibility for the hacks to the three websites.
The SEA supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who has been looked at poorly by the media during the civil war currently dividing the country. Though the SEA are known to be pro-al-Assad, though no one is sure yet why exactly the three websites were targeted.
The BBC notes that the group also attacked the New York Post’s Twitter and Facebook accounts earlier in the week.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
