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Syrian Electronic Army Defaces Skype's Facebook Page, Twitter Account, and Blog 86

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Skype team is working extra hard right now, circumventing an attack that occurred earlier today by hackers claiming to be the Syrian Electronics Army (SEA). This group apparently defaced Skype's Facebook page, Twitter page, as well as the Skype blog. The message? 'Don't use Microsoft emails (hotmail,outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments.'"
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Syrian Electronic Army Defaces Skype's Facebook Page, Twitter Account, and Blog

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  • by Badooleoo ( 3045733 ) on Thursday January 02, 2014 @05:06AM (#45844081)

    Hack someone else to tell everyone that the governments are the bad h4x0rs.

    Sounds legit.

    • by MrDoh! ( 71235 )
      But what if it was the NSA posting this, just to get the Syrians blamed?
      • by Threni ( 635302 )

        Blamed by who? To what end? Who cares? Change the password and move on. Probably a lame "social engineering" attack a la Onion. Nothing to see here.

      • by flyneye ( 84093 )

        It was, in retaliation for the Syrian Army putting whoopee cushions in all the company vehicles.
        Where will it all end?

    • Hack someone else to tell everyone that the governments are the bad h4x0rs.

      I know, and then next you'll tell me that stealing from the rich and giving to the poor seems suspicious because the rich stole that money from the poor to begin with, so you're just compounding stealing with stealing, right?

      The truth is that hacking a target and doing nothing but leaving behind a warning message itself sends a strong message — that you are there only to send a message.

  • Inside job? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ciderbrew ( 1860166 )
    The NSA sold/gave-happily MS' passwords to the S.E.A. Then told them how they are going to upgrade their password encryption or see actual relevant account information passed about.

    Tinfoil is tracking you...
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Chances of anyone from Syria actually doing this... 0%. Chances of the NSA and/or other US/Five Eyes countries doing this: 100%.

    Even the names they make up for their false flag BS sound exactly like something that a US government type would cook up. And Clapper submits his entry, "Syrian Electronic Army", for the win.

    Most false flags are easy to spot with the "who benefits?" question. Obviously Syria has nothing to gain by attacking some lame but popular US websites. But the US and Israel sure would to have

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, let us revisit history.

      The U-boat peril

      Winston Churchill once wrote that, '... the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'. In saying this, he correctly identified the importance of the threat posed during World War Two by German submarines (the 'Unterseeboot') to the Atlantic lifeline. This lifeline was Britain's 'centre of gravity' - the loss of which would probably have led to wholesale defeat in the war. ... Britain might have been starved into submission,...

      And what was a critical factor in keeping the shipping losses by German submarine threat from growing out of control? Signals intelligence, breaking the enemy codes, Ultra intelligence decoding the messages encoded on the German Enigma code machine. With that the Allies could read the orders and reports of the German U-boat fleet.

      Enigma and Ultra - the Cypher War [militaryhi...online.com]

      From the second half of 1941 onwards, information from Enigma was one of the key factors enabling the Royal Navy to divert convoys away from waiting wolf packs. Decoded messages went initially to the Royal Navy section at Bletchley Park, then, if relevant, were passed on to Submarine Tracking Room in the Admiralty and later to the HQ Western Approaches, in Liverpool. ... The gist of the information contained in the signals, carefully edited to conceal its source, was passed on to operational commanders, only a very few of the most senior of whom were let even partially into the secret of Enigma .

      The Enigma material, known as Ultra , was, of course, combined with intelligence from a wide variety of other sources, including HF/DF and wireless intercepts and reconnaissance reports, into a body of information known collectively as "SIGINT".

      The effect of the improved flow of intelligence information was apparent during the second half of

      • by vux984 ( 928602 )

        The Western world is at war with al Qaida and its allies.

        To compare the "war on terror" with "world war ii" is utter nonsense.

        What Snowden has done is equivalent to telling the Germans in 1941 that their submarine codes have been compromised.

        More the equivalent of telling the public that the store installed security cameras in the change room, and your lamenting that the war on shoplifting has been set back.

        You see, the "war on terror" isn't real. If we simply ignore them at the political level, and pursu

    • Chances of anyone from Syria actually doing this... 0%. Chances of the NSA and/or other US/Five Eyes countries doing this: 100%.

      Why, exactly? SEA did something like this before:
      http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/09/02/syrian-electronic-army-hacks-marines-website/ [wsj.com]

      Or are you saying that the message that they posted back then was also NSA-approved?

  • by retroworks ( 652802 ) on Thursday January 02, 2014 @06:31AM (#45844307) Homepage Journal

    Because, no matter what, no matter how much I distrust the NSA, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is not my friend. Ironically, the most disturbing things about the spying systems NSA develops, and Snowden leaks, about monitoring things like Syrian internal communication, is the way those systems will be used by dictators in the nations the USA is trying to monitor. But although small nations like Syria and many others like to play the "underdog" card vs. the USA, wife beaters and child molesters don't make good partners. Thanks, but no thanks, SEA.

    (Of course, there's a chance that the hackers posting / or just posing as Syrian dictator dogs are trying to make this same point... That the NSA, as the enemy of dictatorial tyrants, is not my friend either... Inception!!)

    • by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Thursday January 02, 2014 @07:36AM (#45844543)

      The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. Nothing more, nothing less.

      • by stdarg ( 456557 )

        Even if your enemy's enemy is also your enemy, it's worth treating one of them (usually the weaker one) as a friend in order to weaken both of them.

      • The enemy of your enemy is, occasionally, a useful ally. It's just that people tend to confuse "ally" and "friend".

      • I've always preferred "The enemy of my enemy is an even bigger enemy", as that's usually how it works out.

    • wife beaters and child molesters don't make good partners

      Yes, that's why it's reasonable to fear those who have served in the US Military. They're much more likely to beat wives and molest children.

      I'm not saying that Syria doesn't have problems, but please, let's keep the moral high ground free for those who deserve it.

  • After reading the previous 48 posts in growing confusion, every single one of them troll posts with 0 signal/noise ratio, all I can say is:

    WTF is going on? Skype doesn't work properly anymore. I skype with my parents, and the connection breaks after less than 10 seconds. Did Microsoft change the skype protocol, just before the holiday days, just for a laugh to see what happens?

    Oh sure, it's the fault of some terrorists. I admit that I haven't read TFA, but can someone please reply to my comment then we
    • but can someone please reply to my comment then we'll start a thread here discussing Microsoft and Skype and VOIP protocols, instead of insane GNAA garbage.

      Set your parents up with a soft SIP phone with video, and set up your own asterisk server which it calls. You'll get away from Microsoft and Skype both in one swell foop. Setting up asterisk for basic functionality like that is trivial.

  • I don't think I have ever witnessed so many examples of mental illness being presented by commenters in this article in one place. This is a truly extraordinary thread when it comes to showing how many truly mentally ill people post to Slashdot.
  • News flash! 13 yo Syrian nerd tired of wanking all day, every day. Decides to deface web pages part of the time. Says that he will also spend time trying to build up courage enough to talk to totally hot girl who lives next door... After he wanks a little more.
  • Why would the governments pay for the data when they are already getting it for free?
  • So THAT's how the US found bin Laden! - by sniffing his Hotmail account!

    It's amazing: some terrorists are smart enough to hijack airliners and bring down buildings but they're too darn stupid to use a secure email service! (Or maybe they're just too darn cheap...) Anyway, it's a good thing that these smarter terrorists are around to straighten 'em out. How else are they ever gonna learn?...

  • Posting to remove mistaken moderation
  • Should we take this to mean that Facebook, and Twitter have vulnerabilities that allow a third-party to usurp control of an account?

    I thought modern authentication procedures were solid enough that you couldn't just get access to the account typing a few commands. There had to be more.

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