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Syrian Electronic Army compromises FOX TV Hootsuite account

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The Syrian Electronic Army compromised a Hootsuite account used to post content to several international FOX television networks, the group confirmed to The Desk Tuesday afternoon.

The Hootsuite account was used to post pro-Syria messages on the Twitter accounts of FX Australia and FOX TV United Kingdom.



A member of the SEA who goes by the name Th3 Pr0 told The Desk a colleague had access to over 200 Twitter and Facebook profiles associated with the compromised Hootsuite account.

FOX acknowledged that it had been “hit by some hackers” in a tweet posted on the account @FOXtvUK Tuesday afternoon.



The cyber attack follows several others by the SEA against western media organizations in recent months. Last week, the group also claimed responsibility for a cyber attack against the recruitment website of the U.S. Marine Corps.

A cyber attack orchestrated by the group against the domain registration provider used by the New York Times resulted in a lengthy outage of the newspaper’s website and mobile apps last month.



In April, the group compromised a Twitter profile used by the Associated Press. An erroneous tweet sent by the group that claimed President Barack Obama had been injured in an explosion at the White House briefly caused the Dow Jones index to drop over 100 points.

See also:
A conversation with the Syrian Electronic Army
FBI memo warns about Syrian Electronic Army
Syrian Electronic Army hits New York Times, Twitter DNS records

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About the Author:

Matthew Keys

Matthew Keys is a nationally-recognized, award-winning journalist who has covered the business of media, technology, radio and television for more than 11 years. He is the publisher of The Desk and contributes to Know Techie, Digital Content Next and StreamTV Insider. He previously worked for Thomson Reuters, the Walt Disney Company, McNaughton Newspapers and Tribune Broadcasting. Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn by clicking or tapping here.
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