Forbes.com Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army Because of "Hate for Syria"

Forbes.com is the latest in a long line of high profile meida outlets which have been hacked by the cyber wing of Bashar al-Assad's army - the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).

The SEA has claimed it hacked the Forbes.com website, posting an image (below) of what appears to be a Wordpress administrator panel for multiple Forbes websites.

While Forbes.com now appears to be back to normal, screenshots grabbed by Softpeida show the hackers defaced a number of pages on the site, posting a story which claimed to be written by the website's cybersecurity correspondent Andy Greenberg under the headline: "Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army"

"Flagrant hate for Syria"

As well as defacing the website, they have hijacked three Twitter accounts related to the website. Along with the @ForbesTech account, the hackers have also successfully gained control of the account belonging to social media editor Alex Knapp (@TheAlexKnapp) and personal finance report Samantha Sharf (@Samsharf).

The Forbes Tech account and that of Alex Knapp have been reset, but a message stating "Syrian Electronic Army Was Here" remains on Sharf's account.

A spokesperson for the Syrian Electronic Army confirmed it was behind the attack in an email to IBTimes UK, and when asked why they attacked Forbes.com, said:

"Many articles against the SEA were posted on Forbes, also their hate for Syria is very clear and flagrant in their articles."

The SEA say they were able to hack an administrator account of Forbes.com adding "it's not hard to login since they are using WordPress."

Typically in previous attacks on media organisations like Sky, the Guardian and the BBC, the attacks have been carried out using targeted phishing emails, sent to employees and containing links to malicious sites which tricked them into revealing login credentials.

A spokesperson for Forbes has confirmed that Forbes.com was compromised and that it is "working to resolve the issue."