Journalist vs. the Syrian Electronic Army 43
New submitter Drunkulus writes "Journalist Ira Winkler has an article about his personal run-in with the Syrian Electronic Army. While admitting that the SEA has succeeded in hijacking the Wall Street Journal's Twitter accounts and defacing the RSA conference website, he calls them immature, inept script kiddies in this Computerworld column. Quoting: 'These people purport to be servants of the genocidal dictator of Syria and came together to support him, but they wasted their hack on what amounted to cyberbullying. This is not behavior that the SEA's Syrian intelligence handlers would condone. The SEA wasted an opportunity to promote its message, while divulging previously unknown attack vectors. ... I don't think that sort of immaturity will go over well with the SEA's Syrian intelligence bosses. And that could have implications for the influence of the group in the future.'"
Wha...?! (Score:4, Informative)
I used to deal with cleaning up the aftermath of the SEA daily. I see no evidence of nation state intelligence agency backing. They're mostly script kiddie exploits. They hit vulnerable older versions of popular software like WordPress and its plugins. Then they upload PHP web shells that are basically no different from r57 or c99. Spidershell would an improvement. Before the civil war they typically defaced sites with new pages decrying Israel's existence and calling for others to join them in defacing sites. Every other site defacing operation was basically the same or better.
Re:GENOCIDAL? (Score:4, Informative)
Up until US propaganda started, which was during the Libyan revolution (which we paid a lot of money for, and even bombed quite a few people) Syria was known as the most modern and open society in the Middle East. These are not "stories", go read pretty much anything prior to the Libya revolt. Women in Syria could work and drive, they were not force to wear coverings. There is and was no "State" Religion, which for the Middle East is unheard of (including our 'allies' Saudi Arabia and Israel). There were plenty of Christians and Jews and yes several varieties of Muslims.
Claiming Assad is genocidal requires a new definition of the word! The people revolting have actually been "revolting" since at least the 1980s attempting to over throw the Government of Syria primarily to convert the country to Sharia Law under 1 Islamic Religion. Again, that is a fact not a "story". Syria is no more Islamic as a Country than Russia is Christian. People make that false claim based on the President's beliefs, but that would be like claiming that the US was Catholic under Kennedy and Quaker under Nixon.
Assad has been against US policy of imperialism for as long as he's been in office. He wants to remove Syria from the US Petrol Dollar (quite like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) but of course you may not see the significance. His plans to do so started around the same time as Libya, and suddenly the revolutionaries in his country gained a lot more people, money, and weapons. Kind of like Libya, wow!
If you want to say that "he's a dictator so we should hate him" then you had best look at our primary ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. Then take a close look at Israel and what they do to Palestinians. If you want to claim someone is "X" at least do the friggin homework to back it instead of taking someone's word for it.