Pro-Syrian hacktivists of the Syrian Electronic Army have hijacked the official blog and Twitter account of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the military forces of Israel.
The hackers first targeted the IDF in late June, when they managed to breach and deface its official blog, idfblog.com. The Syrian Electronic Army’s defacement page contained a message accusing Israel of war crimes against Palestine, and violating human rights.
The hacktivists claim to have breached the blog after gaining access to the email and other online accounts of Sacha Dratwa, the social media director of the IDF. A screenshot published on the Syrian Electronic Army’s blog shows that they had access to the IDF blog’s GoDaddy account. At the time of writing, the blog is offline.
On Thursday, the Syrian hackers targeted the IDF once again, this time hijacking the organization’s official Twitter account, @IDFSpokesperson. Using the compromised account, the attackers posted the following message: “#WARNING: Possible nuclear leak in the region after 2 rockets hit Dimona nuclear facility.”
The IDF quickly regained possession of the account and published a statement which reads: “We apologize for the incorrect tweets Our twitter account was compromised. We will combat terror on all fronts including the cyber dimension.”
Several rockets were launched from Gaza on Thursday against Israel, but The Jerusalem Post reported that none of them hit the Dimona nuclear facility, which is located in the Negev desert.
This isn’t the first time the Syrian Electronic Army posts such tweets on a high-profile social media account. In April 2013, the hacktivists hijacked an official Twitter account of the Associated Press and posted an alert which read: “Breaking: Two explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” At the time, stock markets plunged briefly because of the post.
After overtaking the IDF’s Twitter account, the Syrian Electronic Army boasted that it had hacked the “whole ‘Israeli army’ propaganda.”