Three United States-based news outlets had their links altered to take visitors to a Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) page yesterday (Thursday).
The hacking group, who support Syrian incumbent President Bashar al-Assad, have attacked a number of high-profile news outlets including the Guardian, Al Jazeera and AP in the past.
The SEA hacked the content recommendation service Outbrain via a spoof email and were able to compromise links on all three websites because they use the service.
Outbrain blogged: “We are aware that Outbrain was hacked earlier today and we took down the service as soon as it was apparent.”
Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the Washington Post’s managing editor, said in an editor’s note that the links were only compromised for 30 minutes: “We have taken defensive measures and removed the offending module. At this time, we believe there are no other issues affecting The Post site”.
The SEA immediately claimed responsibility for the hack on Twitter.
