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Reports: Syrian Electronic Army Claims It Hacked Obama Campaign Electronic Platforms

Twitter, Facebook, email accounts hacked

October 28, 2013

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) claims to have hacked President Barack Obama’s electronic platforms, including the website barackobama.com, the president’s official Twitter feed, and his campaign’s official email account.

A Twitter account affiliated with the SEA published on Monday screenshots purporting to show the Obama campaign’s official emails.

It also posted a shot that appears to show the SEA gaining backend access to www.barackobama.com, the campaign’s official website.

"We accessed many Obama campaign emails accounts to assess his terrorism capabilities," the SEA tweeted Monday afternoon with a link to a screenshot purported showing the campaign’s emails. "They are quite high."

Hacker websites reported that the SEA had compromised the donation section of the Obama campaign’s website and forced it to redirect users to a SEA site that read, "Hacked by the SEA," according to Hacker News.

The SEA is a nebulous hacking collective loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has hacked several prominent websites and Twitter accounts, including those affiliated with the satirical Onion news organization as well as the government of Israel.

Obama’s official Twitter account and Facebook account appeared to have been temporarily seized by the group, which published several inflammatory messages that have since been removed.

Screenshots of the disputed tweets were captured by Internet security website Techworm, which reported that the SEA may have taken control of the "URL shortener account which is used by Obama social media accounts."

"All the links that Barack Obama account tweeted it and post it on Facebook was redirected to a video showing the truth about Syria," one of the purported hackers told Mashable on Monday after confirming the hack attack.

The SEA tweets and Facebook postings made under Obama’s accounts appeared legitimate, but reportedly redirected users to a video presentation entitled, "Syria facing terrorism."

All of the links appear to have been fixed.

The SEA claimed Monday afternoon that Twitter had flagged as "propaganda" the links it tweeted under Obama’s name.

It also thanked Obama for redirecting users to its website.

A call placed to the phone number listed on the campaign’s website did not connect, and officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment submitted via barackobama.com.