US President Barack Obama’s Twitter and Facebook accounts were hacked and used to promote a video, which depicts the atrocities committed in Syria by the rebels, the Syrian Electronic Army hacker group said.
"All the links that Barack Obama’s account tweeted and posted
on Facebook were redirected to a video showing the truth about
Syria," a SEA spokesperson wrote in an email to Mashable
website.
The altered links on the US president’s accounts led to a
graphically violent 24-minute YouTube video, entitled ‘Syria
facing terrorism’.
“Obama doesn't have any ethical issues with spying on the
world, so we took it upon ourselves to return the favor,” the
SEA wrote on Twitter.
According to Mashable, the Syrian hackers didn’t actually
compromise Obama's social media accounts, but changed the links
in the posts by tampering with the URL shortener service for
BarackObama.com.
The group appears to have hacked the electronic address one of
the administrators of the website, which Obama used in his
presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, to gain access to its
control panel.
The links on Obama’s Twitter and Facebook pages have been
currently fixed.
White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, refused to comment on
the issue during his media-conference on Monday.
The initial attack on BarackObama.com took place on Sunday as it
began redirecting the users to the SEA’s page.
The Syrian Electronic Army is a hacking group, supporting Syrian
President Bashar Assad, which became famous in recent month after
defacing the websites and Twitter accounts of many prominent
media outlets, like AP, AFP, BBC, New York Times and
others.
Obama doesn't have any ethical issues with spying on the world, so we took it upon ourselves to return the favor. #SEA
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) October 28, 2013