The group of hackers calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army appears to have compromised the official Twitter account of business news agency Thomson Reuters, posting a series of political cartoons depicting the ongoing civil war in Syria.
@ThomsonReuters began tweeting the hacked content at 6:33PM ET, posting seven pictures over a period of about 35 minutes. The content remained up for over an hour; the account was suspended at about 7:45PM ET. Other aspects of Thomson Reuters and the Reuters news agency, such as the websites or other Twitter accounts, were unaffected.
The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed responsibility for a number of hacks, mainly Twitter accounts of press agencies. The Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, and Associated Press all had their accounts hijacked and fake or Syrian nationalist content posted.
Syria's state-controlled Internet service provider pulled the plug on the SEA's operations in May, and little has been heard from the group since then, at least until today.
Thomson Reuters offered the following statement to NBC News regarding the hack:
Yesterday evening the @thomsonreuters Twitter account was hacked. In this time, unauthorized individuals posted fabricated tweets of which Thomson Reuters was not the source. The account has been secured and restored.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
