August 28, 2013
417 Lexime
“The New York Times website was unavailable to readers on Tuesday afternoon after an online attack on the company’s domain name registrar,” says an article published in the media on 27 August.
According to the piece, the employees were warned by a statement issued late on Tuesday afternoon saying that the disruption — which appeared to be affecting The New York Times (NYT) website well into the evening — was “the result of a malicious external attack.”
Vedat Xhymshiti | between THE frontlines
They were also advised to “be careful when sending e-mail communications until this situation is resolved.”
The company’s chief information officer Marc Frons said in an interview that the attack was carried out by a group known as “the Syrian Electronic Army, or someone trying very hard to be them.”
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) as depicted by American media is a group of hackers who strongly support the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
NYT recaps that it emerged in May 2011, during the first Syrian uprisings, when it started attacking a wide array of media outlets and non-profits and spamming popular Facebook pages like President Obama’s and Oprah Winfrey’s with pro-Assad comments.
Previously, the group attacked also the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, as well as Twitter feeds for Reuters, the AP and BBC Weather.
The NYT said on Twitter that it is also publishing on http://news.nytco.com The Syrian Electronic Army has taken responsibility for the hack attacks of media in a Twitter post.
