On 17^th of May 2013, the hackers’ group that goes by the name Syrian Electronic Army, hacked the website of Financial Times and several Twitter Accounts owned by the news organization. The hacking took place on 17^th of May 2013, just minutes before 1 PM BST. This hack was confirmed by a spokeswoman from Financial Times who said that the organization is working to resolve the episode as soon as possible.

This hacking attack was one among the series of attacks launched on various media and news organizations which included names like Associated Press and The Guardian. After the hack, the website of Financial Times displayed “Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army”. The Twitter accounts of the organization that were hacked included FT Markets and Lex Column. Thousands of followers of these Twitter accounts received the tweet “The Syrian Electronic Army was here”. Some of the other Twitter accounts of the Financial Times were also hacked and included @ftmideast, @ftindianews and @fttechnews.

This is not the first cybercrime by Syrian Electronic Army. Prior to Financial Times, the hackers’ group also targeted al-Jazeera, National Public Radio of USA, France 24 TV, BBC, Qatari government and Associated Press. The most successful of all hacks done by the Syrian Electronic Army was the tweet from the Twitter account of Associated Press which stated that a bomb blast in White House injured President Obama. As a result of this tweet, the industrial average of the Dow Jones stock exchanged plummeted for a brief period of time but as soon as it was revealed that the news was nothing but a hoax, the industrial average gained back.

The website of Syrian Electronic Army states that all these hacks are nothing but support towards the cause of Syrian Arabs using knowledge and science as weapons. The website makes it clear that the attacks are against the fabricated news about the events that take place in Syria.

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