First day of 2014 found Skype’s social profiles including those on Twitter, Facebook and its blog in the control of Syrian Electronic Army for some time during which the hacking collective posted messages asking Skype to stop spying on people.
SEA tweeted through the hacked Skype Twitter account: “Stop spying on people! via Syrian Electronic Army.” There is no trace of the tweet as Skype regained control of the hacked account minutes after the first reports were published on the web. Folks over at The Next Web have been seemingly quick enough to grab a screenshot of the tweet [below].
The hackers didn’t stop there and they even managed to get hold of Skype’s blog where they posted a message with a similar headline “Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.. Stop Spying!” The blog has been taken offline for now and it redirects to Skype’s homepage.
Skype’s Facebook account was also compromised and the message left there read: “Don’t use Microsoft emails(hotmail,outlook),They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments.” The same message appeared on Skype’s blog as well [below].
The Microsoft owned service sent out the following canned statement to multiple media companies: “We recently became aware of a targeted cyber attack that led to access to Skype’s social media properties, but these credentials were quickly reset. No user information was compromised.”
The messages fall directly in line with recent controversies surrounding NSA’s over-the-top spying and surveillance activities. Leaked documents and slides by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reveal that Microsoft owned Skype installed a “back door” that enables government monitoring of video and voice calls made using the service.
It seems that the SEA won’t be stopping this year as well and will continue with its hacking spree and gain unauthorized control of social media accounts of high-profile companies like it did in 2013.
