Wrong, That’s Not What Happened
The BBC technology reporting is normally much better that this: Washington Post, CNN and Time websites hit by pro-Assad hackers. For a short period of time if you clicked on some of the links at those sites, your would be directed to a web site of the pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).
What SEA did was run an e-mail phishing scam on the employees of Outbrain, a content recommendation service that supplies a plug-in that suggests links related to articles. Using the account and password information supplied by Outbrain employees who weren’t paying attention, the SEA changed the software to redirect people to their site.
It took Outbrain a couple of hours to repair the software and change everyone’s account name and password. Based on past experience, the employees will be cautious for at least the rest of today, and maybe even tomorrow, but by Monday it could happen again.
