The “Syrian Electronic Army,” which supports Syrian President Bassar al-Assad, hacked the websites of The New York Daily News, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., three major British newspapers and Walmart Canada Thursday.
The “Thanksgiving gift,” even though the holiday is strictly American, was “received” by many people who surfed their websites. They found a message stating, “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)” and were redirected to a page showing the image of an eagle bearing the Syrian flag and a message in Arabic.
The hackers tweeted, C
Walmart said the attack did not expose customer data or compromise its systems, and CBC said the hackers did not access its systems.
The Syrian Electronic Army apparently did not hack the sites directly but attacked through a Twitter account linked with the Syrian hackers posted an image that appeared to show it accessed an account of the Gigya company that helps businesses identify visitors to their websites, such as the professional football, hockey and basketball leagues and the largest electronic media sites in the United States.
Gigya said it has returned to normal operations and that no one was compromised.
The London Daily Telegraph reported on its Twitter account, “A part of our website run by a third-party was compromised earlier today,” The Telegraph said via its Twitter account. “We’ve removed the component. No Telegraph user data was affected.