LinkedIn might be celebrating the launch of its new iOS and Android apps right now, but some of their staffers probably have others things to attend to.
Silicon Republic reports that for a while, the page displayed a Syrian flag, together with the commonly used image of Bashar Al Assad suited up in his army gear.
If you try to visit the LinkedIn blog right now, all you’re going to get is a message that it is currently unavailable.The attack appears to have come courtesy of the Syrian Electronic Army, a group of hackers based in the Middle Eastern country that is currently waging an online war against the government’s detractors.
In the past, Syrian hackers have gone after Middle Eastern news networks Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, as well as their peers, Anonymous, taking down the social network AnonPlus.
Their most recent attack on Al Arabiya saw the Syrian Electronic Army hack into the news network’s social media accounts, spreading false information about an explosion in Qatar, as well as the sacking of the Qatari Prime Minster and Foreign Minister.
As far as the latest attack on LinkedIn is concerned, the reasons given for the attack were included in a message, in which they cirticized LinkedIn, accusing the site of spreading lies about Syria.
A long statement about the current state of affairs in Syria was followed by a message directed at LinkedIn:
“We are a group of Syrian youth who wanted to show the truth and therefore we used this website which was used to spread lies about Syria. We are the Syrian Electronic Army and we come in peakoe (sic) for those who want peace for Syria.”How LinkedIn itself has been spreading lies about Syria is something we’re not entirely sure of, but since users are able to post updates and share articles on the professional network, as on any other social network, it is possible that user-generated content led to the attack on the LinkedIn blog.
A Twitter account which appears to belong to a member of the Syrian Electronic Army, but who is tweeting from Utah, announced the attack:
#SEA #Syria #RealSyria @Linkedin Blog blog.linkedin.com Get Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army | @AnonyOps @teedoz @techwdIn an attempt to clamp down on the uprising, various measures have been taken in Syria, from blocking services like WhatsApp and Bambuser, while the Syrian Electronic Army targets services and networks who have spoken out against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and have received high praise from the president, as a result.
— Th3 Pr0 (@Th3Pr0_SEA) April 25, 2012
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