After a series of cyberattacks on numerous news websites, the Syrian Electronic Army was hacked by Anonymous , who managed to obtain data from them and publish it online. The SEA group, which fights on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad, denies the breach and says that the data revealed by Anonymous does not belong to its members.
SEA has emerged since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. Using mostly amateurish tactics like phishing emails, they manage to hack websites, deface them, or publish whatever they want from high-profile news sites. The group has carried out attacks on Twitter, the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, NPR, Thomson Reuters, the Huffington Post, and many others .
Despite the fact that SEA has not been officially recognized by the Syrian government, the group reports that its attacks are retaliation for the way Western media describe the conflicts in Syria. The group claims it has more than 10,000 members. Interviews it has given from time to time show that the group has between four and nine leaders who coordinate the rest.
The Global Post reported Tuesday that the SEA website was hacked in mid-April. A hacker living in Syria and linked to Anonymous said the site was hacked and about 140 email addresses of alleged SEA members were leaked. The data had not been released until after the chemical weapons reports.
The Global Post and security researcher Brian Krebs reported that information about SEA, including email addresses, passwords, Twitter handles, and more, was published on the Deep Web sometime over the weekend. The information also appears to reveal the identities of some of the group's top members.
Motherboard reported that a young man named Hatem Deeb is the leader of the group. NBC News recently pointed out that Hatem Deeb referred to himself as a “founding member” of SEA in a Syrian newspaper article published at the beginning of the Syrian conflict.
However, a spokesperson for SEA, who wanted to call himself Syrian Eagle, told the Huffington Post on Wednesday that SEA was not hacked by Anonymous or anyone else. Syrian Eagle said that the individuals named by the Global Post are not even part of the SEA group.
The Syrian Eagle added that news agencies were reporting the identities of alleged members of the group simply to “draw attention,” implying that the websites must have been instructed “to publish false and fabricated information about us.”
Speaking to VICE in May, a veteran and active Anonymous known as Commander X said: “To be honest, this war, you could probably fill a book if you wanted to write down every detail of the involvement between Anonymous and SEA.”
