Syrian group claims to hack Facebook domain
The pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army says it seized the Facebook.com online address
Ben Flanagan
Published:
Updated:
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) on Wednesday said it had hacked Facebook's domain details in the latest in a series of high-profile cyberattacks claimed by the pro-Assad group.
The SEA said in a tweet it had changed details on the registration page for the Facebook domain, although does not appear to have hijacked the site itself.
An image tweeted by the group shows a website registration page with Facebook's home city changed to Damascus, Syria.
The SEA said in a tweet it had updated Facebook's domain-registrar entry.
The SEA joked that the attack was a belated birthday greeting to Facebook, which Mark Zuckerberg founded 10 years ago from his Harvard University dorm room.
“Happy Birthday Mark,” SEA said in a message on Twitter. “Facebook owned by #SEA.”
READ MORE: Facebook: 10 years young in the Arab world
Facebook said no traffic to the website was hijacked, and that none of its users were affected.
“Facebook and the people who use it were not affected in any way,” Iain Mackenzie, pan-Euro Communications Manager
at Facebook, told Al Arabiya News.
The changes were made to records in the registrar MarkMonitor, and the SEA suggested it could have made further hacks given more time.
“We changed the name servers, but it is taking too much time,” SEA said in another tweet.
READ MORE: What Arabs ‘like’: Mideast’s top five Facebook moments
The SEA also suggested it had changed the domain-name registration details for Yahoo and Amazon, although this could not immediately be verified by Al Arabiya News.
The Facebook domain details appeared to have been restored on Thursday morning.
The SEA has claimed dozens of cyberattacks, including a recent hack of CNN's social-media accounts. It has also targeted Reuters and the Associated Press.
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