Such an irony. While President Obama was delivering a speech regarding Cyber Security for his people, a hacker group, going by the name CyberCaliphate, claiming to be affliated with the terrorist outfit ISIS, managed to hack into the YouTube and Twitter(@CENTCOM) accounts of U.S. Central Command.
And if that wasn’t enough, they went ahead and gave the world subversive and threatening messages, carrying Islamic State propaganda.
They tweeted a Pastebin message, stating:
Pentagon networks hacked
AMERICAN SOLDIERS,
WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS. #CyberCaliphateIn the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the CyberCaliphate under the auspices of ISIS continues its CyberJihad. While the US and its satellites kill our brothers in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan we broke into your networks and personal devices and know everything about you.
You’ll see no mercy infidels. ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base. With Allah’s permission we are in CENTCOM now.
We won’t stop! We know everything about you, your wives and children.
U.S. soldiers! We’re watching you!
Alleged links to confidential US army files come with the message, although how much hacking was involved is debatable, since some files were supposedly made public earlier, dating back to 2005. Matt Navarra from The Next Web gave some exceptional live coverage through Twitter.
UPDATE: US Central Command's YouTube account also appears to have been hacked by ISIS http://t.co/PrpOVoFXBC pic.twitter.com/uAa9o18PRV
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 12, 2015
UPDATE 2: US Central Command's (@CENTCOM) Twitter account is now set to default egg avatar http://t.co/PrpOVoFXBC pic.twitter.com/8ftHszDNZI
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 12, 2015
UPDATE 3: US Central Command's (@CENTCOM) Twitter account is now suspended: http://t.co/PrpOVoFXBC pic.twitter.com/U4TBM4274H
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 12, 2015
UPDATE 4: US Central Command's (@CENTCOM) YouTube account has also been suspended: http://t.co/PrpOVoFXBC pic.twitter.com/ddAwvq1mie
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 12, 2015
But then, BBC came in with a brief confusion when it mistakenly reported “US Central Command was taken over by hackers“, only to be corrected later.
U.S. Defense Official later confirmed to WSJ, saying,
We can confirm that the U.S. Central Command Twitter + YouTube accounts were compromised
One of the tweets reads “ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base.” An image from a computer web cam in a military facility accompanied the tweet. When compromised, the Twitter page began posting screen shots and .zip files of information about military commanders- including phone numbers and email addresses. It also contains slides that look like they’ve been lifted from military presentations including one titled: Army Force Management Model. While the YouTube page has got propaganda videos supporting ISIS.
But what needs to be stressed is hacking into U.S Defense servers and hacking into their Twitter accounts are two extremely different things. Being ‘military’ does not technically add extra security layers to twitter accounts. All sorts of rumours are afoot the cyberspace, unsure of what really is going on- everything is hush -hush.
But if it turns out (which is like, really really impossible) that the hackers actually managed to break into CENTCOM servers, well, no words can explain the massive amount of damage and consequences that will ensue.
The story is developing and we’ll update you, once we get more.
IMAGE : FLICKR / CC 2.0 -ND/Harrisburg U.S. Army Recruiter
