How the Syrian Electronic Army Hacked The Onion 91
Nerval's Lobster writes "For comedy publication The Onion, a recent cyber-attack by the Syrian Electronic Army was no laughing matter. The SEA managed to compromise The Onion's Twitter account, plastering it with insults aimed at the United Nations, Israel, and Syrian rebels. 'UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: "Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor,"' read a typical (and perhaps one of the more printable) ones. When the Tweets appeared, some Onion Twitter-followers questioned whether the newspaper was playing some sort of elaborate meta-joke, perhaps riffing on a recent series of high-profile cyber attacks. But the SEA was serious, and so was The Onion about flushing the attackers from its systems. In a new posting on theonion.github.io, the publication's IT crew details exactly what happened. On May 3, attackers from the SEA fired off phishing emails to Onion employees, at least one of whom clicked on a malicious link. From there, the attackers compromised a handful of systems. 'In total, the attacker compromised at least 5 accounts,' the account concluded. 'The attacker logged in to compromised accounts from 46.17.103.125 which is also where the SEA hosts a website.' But following the crisis, The Onion couldn't resist swiping at its attackers. 'Syrian Electronic Army Has a Little Fun Before Inevitable Upcoming Deaths at Hands of Rebels,' read the headline for a May 6 article that described a fictional massacre of the SEA in gruesome detail."
twisted "humor"(?) (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, the Onion's "joke" article on the rebels massacring the SEA sounded a little disturbingly vindictive and twisted. Who knows if some real life fanatics won't take inspiration from that "joke"(?) article to make it happen in real life. How would the Onion look then?
Peace has come to Zimbawe (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the revolution ISN'T for the good of the Syrian people, but good for the US, EU, and Israel?
There's no reason it can't be both, there's also no reason to mod your factual observations as "flamebait". We are going to have to wait a decade or more to find out if the "Arab spring" changed anything for the better, I clearly recall people (as opposed to governments) in the west celebrating because Mugabe had come to power in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), Stevie Wonder went so far as to sing about it. Their moral reasoning was sound at that time in history, but with 20/20 hindsight Stevie's claim that "Peace has come to Zimbawe" sounds foolish.
The political cynic in me thinks that western governments see two enemies fighting each other on their own territory. they are in no hurry to pull them apart.