Pentagon Twitter account hijacked by Islamic State hackers
Cyberattackers identifying with terror group release US military war scenarios and personal information about soldiers, threaten troops
Ilan Ben Zion is an AFP reporter and a former news editor at The Times of Israel.
Hackers claiming to be affiliated with the Islamic State hacked a Twitter account belonging to US Military’s Central Command on Monday and posted internal documents to the web.
“American soldiers, we are coming, watch your back! ISIS. #CyberCaliphate,” the first tweet posted on the account after it was apparently hacked said. The Centcom photo was changed to that of a masked man in a black-and-white checked scarf with the Islamic State flag.
The perpetrators also published documents with the personal contact information of senior American military officers, as well as files they claimed were Pentagon war scenarios.
Many of the documents were publicly available files and didn’t belong to the US military, however. One document was labeled as belonging to the MIT Lincoln Lab, “a federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security,” according to the institution’s website.
“ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base,” said another tweet.
The Central Command’s YouTube account was also apparently hacked, with two Islamic State propaganda videos posted entitled O Soldiers of Truth Go Forth, and Flames of War.
It wasn’t immediately clear who was behind the cyber attack, which took place as President Barack Obama delivered a speech about cybersecurity.
"The more we do to protect consumer information & privacy, the harder it is for hackers to damage our businesses & hurt our economy." —Obama
— White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) January 12, 2015
Twitter spokespeople reportedly said they were aware of the hack and were working to fix it.
Shortly afterwards, the @CENTCOM Twitter user was suspended.
A Pentagon official told The Wall Street Journal that CentCom was aware of the cyberattack, but had no immediate information about how it took place.
