Syria Government supporters hack Financial Times

Monday, 20 May 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

REUTERS: The Financial Times’ website and Twitter feeds were hacked on Friday, renewing questions about whether the popular social media service has done enough to tighten security as cyber-attacks on the news media intensify.

The Syrian Electronic Army, an online group that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was behind the incident which followed a phishing attack on the company’s email accounts, FT reported on its website.

The attack is the latest in which hackers commandeered the Twitter account of a prominent news organisation to push their agenda. Twitter’s 200 million users worldwide send out more than 400 million tweets a day, making it a potent distributor of news.

“Twitter has become a big enough media outlet that they should provide better security for high-value accounts like the Associated Press, the FT and others,” said Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer with security software maker F-Secure.

Also on Friday, the Kyodo news agency reported that Yahoo Japan suspects up to 22 million of its 200 million user IDs may have been leaked. Kyodo said Yahoo Japan also detected an unauthorised attempt to access the administrative systems of its web portal.