(Image Source: sea.sy/indexs/)
If Consumer Reports would like to do another public service, then their site should read: Obama website hacked — stay away until further notice. It appears that a page on President Obama’s presidential campaign website was compromised by a hacking organization Sunday evening.
The page, donate.barackobama.com, temporarily redirected users to a website, sea.sy/indexs/, appearing to belong to hacking group Syrian Electronic Army, which is the group behind the compromised New York Post Facebook page and multiple prominent Twitter accounts. When redirected, users read “Hacked by SEA.”
It is not clear when the Obama website was first compromised, but around 8:15 p.m. Sunday, the webpage ceased redirecting users to the alternate website.
The donation page that was compromised seems to have been old, because Obama’s perpetual never-ending campaign has most recently been using another page on the website, contribute.barackobama.com, to collect funds.
The Syrian Electronic Army is the now-infamous hacking group that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Just when the Obama team thought it was safe to resume operations, Monday the group again struck out at the president, this time hijacking President Obama’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts. The Syrian Electronic Army have claimed that they successfully broke into several of his campaign email accounts.
“Obama doesn’t have any ethical issues with spying on the world, so we took it upon ourselves to return the favor,” wrote the Syrian Electronic Army.
For an unknown amount of time this Monday afternoon, shortened links posted from Obama’s Twitter and Facebook accounts redirected users to a pro-Syrian video.
Twitter reacted by warning users that links from Obama’s Twitter account may be “unsafe to visit!”
The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed on Twitter that they were able to hack into Obama’s campaign email accounts and, just for proof, the group posted on Twitter a screenshot showing the compromised accounts.
“We accessed many Obama campaign emails accounts to assess his terrorism capabilities,” the Syrian Electronic Army said. “They are quite high.”
The screenshot below was also posted by the hacking group, which depicts the backend of the Obama website in an effort to show that they had gained access to their control panel, providing them access to fundraising information and contributions.
It is unclear whether or not the administration will feel the need to respond to these breaches, because they could raise greater questions about both the NSA spying program, as well as the Obama administration’s ability to keep the records of millions of Americans safe on HealthCare.gov.
