Reuters blog platform and Twitter account hacked

On Friday, Reuters blog platform was hacked with false posts and on Saturday, the @ReutersTech account on Twitter was taken over and renamed @TechMe. False tweets were sent before it was taken down.

There have been two cyber-attacks on Reuters in two days. On Friday, hackers gained access to a Reuters blogging platform. The false blog posts claimed that the Free Syrian Army was withdrawing from major cities and was acquiring chemical weapons from Libya. Thomson Reuters, the agency's parent company, made a statement, “Reuters.com was a target of a hack on Friday. Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists.” According to one fake blog post, the Commander Riad al-Assad of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), told Reuters in a telephone interview that that “the Syrian Free Army (sic) will withdraw from all Syrian cities.” He further allegedly said that the regular army had killed 1,000 rebel soldiers, and that the heavy losses, together with internal wrangling "for money and possessions", as well as betrayals, were forcing the rebels to leave Aleppo and other Syrian cities, and head to Turkey. The post said that they would then "re-coordinate" at secret bases set up “under the supervision of the Turkish government and the Israeli intelligence service.”

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Reuters false blog post by hackers.

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The Free Syrian Army issued a statement denying that any such interview had taken place, and blamed President Bashar al-Assad's government for the false posting. The FSA said in a statement that the report "was fabricated by the regime, as it seems the news agency was hacked." Reuters suspended blogging on Friday and no new posts have been made, pending investigations. On Saturday, the @ReutersTech Twitter account was hacked and renamed @TechMe. It was then defaced with pro-Syrian government tweets, according to a screenshot of the Twitter page captured by Worldwide-Nieuws.

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Hacked Twitter feed screenshot courtesy Worldwide-Nieuws

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The account has since been suspended and an investigation of the breach is under way, Reuters said.