The hacker group known as the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has hit Microsoft once again. This time, the pesky cyber-miscreants managed to break into the Microsoft Office Blogs site, according to a screenshot posted on the hackers’ Twitter feed on Monday.
The Official Microsoft Office Blogs Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army | http://t.co/hI6OQUUktZ More to come.. #SEA pic.twitter.com/IuO17nMfzz
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) January 20, 2014
As the above screenshot demonstrates, the SEA used its illicit access to publish a blog post entitled “Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army, which appeared on the Office Blog homepage. The attack came just as Microsoft unveiled a redesign of the Office Blog, according to PC World. A subsequent tweet from SEA shows the blog’s CMS – the backend of the site, where posts are created, edited, and published – which apparently runs WordPress. Of course, Microsoft has since purged the offending article from its site.
SEA has become quite a thorn in Microsoft’s side as of late. First came a January 1 hijack of the official Skype Twitter account, a Microsoft subsidiary, which warned users that the company shares user data with governments. (A claim that, at least in part, is actually true, based on leaked NSA documents.) Less than two weeks later, SEA managed to break into a number of Microsoft-run Web properties, including the Official Microsoft Blog and the Microsoft News Twitter account. Then, last week, SEA managed to hack into a number of Microsoft employee email accounts using phishing attacks, according to Microsoft.
Clearly, the SEA has it out for Microsoft, which hasn’t yet learned how to properly protect its corporate Web properties from such a tenacious adversary. Whether or not that speaks to the company’s overall ability to keep its users’ data safe is’s a whole other matter entirely.
What do you think of SEA’s latest attack on Microsoft? Sound off in the comments.
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