Syrian Electronic Army Taunts Twitter

Until today I’d never even heard of the “Syrian Electronic Army”, yet here we are discussing them as they decide to take credit for hacking the Twitter account of a major UK TV network according to a report on a leading website. The Syrian Electronic Army claims to have hacked the Twitter account of the ITV network last Friday, where one of the hijacked tweets included a link to a story about Twitter’s recently introduced two-step verification, obviously intended with a hint of irony since the article is about preventing hijacking such as the one that had taken place to post said link.

“Just kidding. The Syrian Electronic Army was here. #SEA via @Official_SEA12,” read a tweet on the @itvlonder twitter account, any tweets from the group have since been deleted and the account has been restored.

The insulting injury to all of this is that it was ITV’s lack of security that let them down, obviously. An ITV spokesperson spoke to Reuters, saying that the hack was triggered by a phishing email, where an employee most likely opened a malicious link via email which allowed the hackers access to the account. The spokesperson also went on to say that they didn’t know whether the two-step verification feature was enabled on the compromised account.

One thing is for certain, if two-step verification wasn’t enabled before, it certainly will be now, along with a more difficult password and a new policy on emails, but it just goes to show that any level of security can be beaten by simply tricking someone with a link, so as always, be careful what you click.

Image courtesy of Dawn