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Forbes site hacked by Syrian Electronic Army, user email addresses stolen

Forbes site hacked by Syrian Electronic Army, user email addresses stolen

By Rohan Swamy | Updated: 17 February 2014 14:48 IST

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After having tried unsuccessfully to capture Facebook's domain name, and divert its traffic to another website, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) on Friday allegedly hacked into the Forbes official website, and claims that it made off with one million user accounts and passwords. In addition it also claimed that it initially wanted to sell the database, but now are saying that it will release it on the web after it finds a secure server to host it.

The attack, was confirmed by Forbes and in a very brief statement by their spokeswoman, and later on a separate post on their site, apart from on their Facebook page, which read: "Forbes.com's publishing platform was compromised. We've been making adjustments to the site to protect online privacy and the editorial integrity of our content. We are looking into and monitoring the situation closely. We're taking this matter very seriously."

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The SEA posted screenshots on their Twitter page of the hack. It also claimed that the accounts of @ForbesTech and their social media editor Alex Knapp @TheAlexKnapp were hacked by it, which has not been officially confirmed. The report by Recode stated that the SEA even tried to edit stories on the website, and that three stories were taken down.

The SEA is a non-governmental organisation, according to their Facebook page, and supports the regime of Syrian president Bashar-al-Assad and spreads pro-Assad propaganda on hacked websites. In the past, it has hacked the likes of BBC, CBS, The Financial Times, The New York Times and even The Onion. There are no details on how the hack was perpetrated, but the standard procedure according to the report is that the SEA usually sends an email with an attachment infected with malware which leads to the attack.

The SEA even posted tweets via its official account @Official_SEA16 regarding the hack. Forbes is reportedly investigating the matter as of now.

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