The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) recently claimed responsibility for having broken into the systems of Forbes, having snuck out data on users and even publishing illegitimate stories on the news outlet’s website.
The pro-Assad activist group hit once again on Friday and as usual, it turned to Twitter to brag about its latest breach. In a tweet, the SEA shared screenshots of Forbes’ WordPress system and explained that it went through the account of an employee of the organisation (apparently the Social Media Manager) in order to steal the credentials of over a million of users.
Thereafter, Forbes admitted in a Facebook post that it has been the object of a cyber-attack and urged users to change their encrypted-passwords as a precaution. However, the news outfit made no mention on the number of emails which have been compromised.
Forbes’ misfortune is another line to a song which never ends. Last year, the Syrian Electronic Army orchestrated attacks at the BBC, Financial Times, Associated Press and in late August, the New York Times. Other than this, Assad’s right wing has accessed Viber’s database and took over Thomson and Reuters’ Twitter Feed.
The spokesperson from SEA told International Business Times that Forbes has been targeted this time as “hate for Syria is very clear and flagrant in their articles”.
In an attempt to reassure onlookers, Forbes spokeswoman Mia Carbonell made the following announcement: “We’ve been making adjustments to the site to protect online privacy and the editorial integrity of our content.”
According to Re/Code, the attack happened at the least appropriate moment as Forbes’ owners are looking to find a buyer.
A week ago, Bloomberg noted that companies from China and Singapore have shown an interest in the New York based media organization.
The obvious question to ask is: who will be SEA’s next target?
Source: USA Today, Cnet, Re/code
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