Fake tweet panics Wall Street
US stocks took a big hit Tuesday when the Associated Press had its Twitter account hacked with a fake report sending Wall Street into a panic.
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It sounds like it could be the name of a band you might hear on Triple J, but Syrian Electronic Army is a real online threat, as media organisations and universities across the world are discovering.
The latest target of the online militant group, which describes itself as "proudly pro-Assad", is US media group The Associated Press. It found its Twitter feed hacked and telling its millions of followers that there had been two explosions in the White House, leaving President Barack Obama injured.
The hack caused "pure chaos" on the US stock exchange, briefly wiping out $US136.5 billion and leaving AP's Twitter feeds suspended.
False alarm ... the tweet from a hacked Associated Press account.
AP joins the US 60 Minutes program, NPR Radio and the BBC's Weather service in having their Twitter accounts hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.
So what exactly is Syrian Electronic Army? On its website, the group professes to be involved in arming Syrian Arabs with "science and knowledge" against campaigns from the Arab and western media to broadcast fabricated news about what is actually happening in Syria.
"We are a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria, and this distortion is carried out by many Facebook pages that deliberately work to spread hatred and sectarian intolerance between the peoples of Syria to fuel the uprising," a mission statement on its website reads.
Syrian Electronic Army claims among its latest "penetrations" hacks of the Twitter feeds of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and its president, Sepp Blatter. The aim? To publish the truth about Qatar's winning bid for the 2022 World Cup.
The group also has a program to leak documents, obtained by hacking into email accounts belonging to countries "that became Syria's enemies" by arming "Free Army" militia and co-operating with al-Qaeda.
"The official emails of these countries prove the real nature of their policies and also shows some of the large sums of money, the deals and general military policies that combined into a grand conspiracy against the Syrian people committed by western and Arab governments," the website states. "These files are at last, extremely important to reveal, in order to once and for all, prove this conspiracy."
The most recent email target has been the secretary-general of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, whose details have been posted online.
Their stated goal is to use social media to spread their message and hack well-known websites to use them to broadcast "some facts – thereby using their own momentum against them".
Syrian Electronic Army also maintains a public list of martyrs, describing such a death as an honour for their cause and that the blood of those killed can "illuminate the road we are on and guide us in our fight to defend our country".
The group has a tense relationship with fellow hacking group Anonymous, most likely due to Anonymous' anti-Assad stance.
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