The Syrian Electronic Army’s Proudest Hacking Moments

Nothing says modesty like an Instagram selfie.

ByABC News
September 4, 2013, 10:33 AM
The BBC official weather and Arabic Twitter accounts were hacked in March of 2013. Hackers controlled the accounts for almost three hours and posted anti-Semitic and political tweets.
The BBC official weather and Arabic Twitter accounts were hacked in March of 2013. Hackers controlled the accounts for almost three hours and posted anti-Semitic and political tweets.
official_sea/Instagram

Sept. 4, 2013— -- The U.S. Marine Corps joined the likes of Twitter and The New York Times this weekend, when the Syrian Electronic Army tampered with their recruiting website. The message was simple: Americans should fight alongside the Syrian army and not aid the rebels.

This is the latest in a long line of attacks that date back to 2011; victims include Harvard University, LinkedIn, Al Jazeera, and others. In one of the SEA’s more bizarre attacks, the group used the E! Entertainment Network’s Twitter account to claim that Justin Bieber had announced he was gay.

We don’t always know why the pro-Assad group goes after certain Western media outlets, but we do know they like to brag about it.

Here is the official Instagram account of the Syrian Electronic Army, and our favorite screenshots below.

The SEA’s latest attack was posted September 2 on Marines.com. A spokesperson for the U.S. Marine Corps said the site was not hacked, but redirected to view false messages.

Twitter’s inline image service was out of action on August 28 after the site’s domain name server record was hacked. The SEA claimed responsibility.

On August 14, The New York Post’s Twitter and Facebook accounts were defaced.

On May 6, the Syrian Electronic Army confirmed that they had hacked The Onion’s Twitter account.

On April 23, The SEA took over the Twitter account of the Associated Press, claiming that there had been an explosion at the White House. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped sharply because of this.

FIFA World Cup’s Twitter account was hacked on April 22 to make a fake announcement that the organization president, Sepp Blatter, had resigned. The tweets also suggested that Blatter was being offered bribes by Qatar in exchange for hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

The BBC official weather and Arabic Twitter accounts were hacked on March 21. Hackers controlled the accounts for almost three hours and posted anti-Semitic and political tweets.

The Telegraph’s Twitter account was hacked on March 20 for eight hours but whatever the SEA posted was removed in less than two hours.