Twitter.com Domain Seized by Syrian Electronic Army

Repost:

The prolific SEA[1] has been responsible for many hacks when their aim went wider than tracking domestic dissidents via internet monitoring with hardware from BlueCoat[2]. Logs[3] leaked by dissident supporting Telecomix[4] from this BlueCoat hardware for example show filters set to monitor the religious and sexual habits of all traffic routed through the datacenter they were installed in.

After Assad deployed his military forces SEA started to become a more public facing entity, taking on media firms due to perceived slights in reporting and others to cull more user information to further track targets. A short time-line from Wikipedia:

April 2013: The SEA hijacked the Associated Press Twitter account and falsely claimed the White House had been bombed and President Barack Obama injured.

May 2013: The ITV news London Twitter account was hacked on the 24th May 2013 by the SEA. The Android applications of British Broadcaster Sky News were also hacked on 26 May 2013 on Google Play Store.

July 2013, Truecaller servers were allegedly hacked into by the Syrian Electronic Army.

August 2013: Advertising service Outbrain was hacked by the SEA via a spearphishing attack. This allowed them to place redirects into the websites of The Washington Post, Time, and CNN.

Their history has been starkly pro-Assad, even going as far to defend indiscriminate bombing runs on the more rural cities in Syria of which the hackers are not likely to live in. While villages far away from the loyalist strongholds of Mezzeh 86 or al-Assad housing are more easily cast off of 'nests of terrorists' to be 'cleansed' it has to be harder to rationalize the same when the bombing runs are striking neighborhoods within visible range of these loyalist strongholds.

A SEA affiliated twitter account became highly critical after a chemical weapons attack on the outside suburbs of Damascus, the user posted a video of the event along with the message:

"We are calling for all members of SEA to focus their attentions on the political elite that is the scourge of our country."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Electronic_Army

[2] http://www.bluecoat.com/

[3] http://bluesmote.com/

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecomix

Repost:

Fair bit of warning edward, these articles get banned from HN rather quick. Even thought I have attempted to keep talk on things such as the "Syrian Electronic Army" and their hacks discussion has been forcefully muted.

In a now deaded article on the probable chemical attack on Zamalka Syria, I made some comments about my covering the area before[1]. I detailed the location of some of the aggressors on the suburb as well[2].

In the second comment I linked to some footage from Zamalka years ago when open protest was still allowed, much like other Syrian cities people were out in mass after Friday prayer.

In the first comment I posted a panoramic stitch[3] I made from video of an attack on Zamalka from al-Assad neighborhood above it, there is military and officer housing along with artillery and howitzer army space behind it[4].

I also spoke of sectarian cleansing that has been documented in Homs and other areas,[5] where general bombardment and artillery siege displaces Sunnis while Alawite families are moved in to shore up military supply lines.

This latest attack on the fringes of Damascus represent something significant, obvious now due to the reactions it has obtained from other nations. Neighborhoods like al-Assad and Moadamiyet al-Shams have loyalist housing where civilians where brought back to be lynched,[6] and they are now nearing the direct lines of fire. So all attempts are being made to halt the advance to where Assad's war criminals roost, such as mass gassing of residential neighborhoods around it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248545

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248433

[3] http://i.imgur.com/XM85Q1q.jpg

[4] http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=33.551696&lon=36.378479&z=...

[5] http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/syrian-army-ren...

[6] http://storyful.com/stories/41049

A vast multitude of hits relate to families, sexual habits, religious affiliations.

What SEA does with news orgs is derail them as much as possible. There is very much an internal campaign to 'cleanse' the terrorists, repopulate parts of Homs with Alawites.

This is real. Please don't hell ban me for it again.