A number of global websites including two belonging to UK newspapers have been hit by a cyber attack coming from the Syrian Electronic Army. The hackers hijacked the DNS entry of the Gigya comment system that either redirected users to their own sites or caused the affected domain to display their messages.
We are aware of the issue with our site & hope it will pass soon. It's not affecting all users http://t.co/MnZ9Tn4baO pic.twitter.com/reMRVWqclJ
— The Independent (@Independent) November 27, 2014
Both The Telegraph and The Independent acknowledged the attacks through social media, but reassured users that no personal information was stolen and the damage was mainly to users seeing pop up messages from the hackers. Not everyone was affected, as many users were still able to access both sites normally; although it appears that Apple systems were more susceptible to the redirects.
The goals of the attacks are still yet unknown; however, the Syrian Electronic Army has been active since the being formed at the beginning of the Syrian Civil war. As followers of embattled President Bashar al-Assad, the army has been hacking and defacing websites including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Associated Press, and Dubai-based Al-Arabia TV. Like this most recent attack, no real information was ever stolen, with the attackers simply redirecting users to images of Assad or their own symbols.
All affected website appear to have resolved the issue at the time of this writing and there does not appear to have been any real damage done.
[Source: The Independent; via: The Next Web]
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