Something called the Syrian Electronic Army, aligned with Assad, is taking creditfor hacking the New York Times, Twitter, and the Huffington Post.
The group said in a tweet that it took over the Twitter.com domain. The SEA said it was able to change some of the basic information in Twitter's domain registry, such as the admin name and the email address for contacts, at DomainTools.com, here. However, it looks like that information has been switched back to normal.
A Twitter spokesperson directed Business Insider to the company's status page, which states that the site's domain records were modified.
Twitter says the attack affected the service it uses to host images on its site and some of those images were briefly affected. Twitter hasn't expanded on the cause of the attack, but says no user information was compromised.
The New York Times website was taken down today too. The newspaper said the site went down after an attack on the company’s domain name registrar, Melbourne IT. Employees were told to stop sending sensitive emails during the attack, The Times' Christine Haughney wrote.
Marc Frons, chief information officer for The New York Times, issued a statement this afternoon warning employees that the external attack was by “the Syrian Electronic Army or someone trying very hard to be them.”
Meanwhile, even as cyber attacks continue, the powers that be seem to be reliving the glory days of the bombing of Serbia over its treatment of Kosovo. People seem to forget, but the bombing went on and on and on, seemed to harden Milosevic and Serbian resolve, even as their infrastructure was being destroyed, and led to many voices calling for 'boots on the ground'. So the glorious salvation of the Kosovar people via the bombing of Serbia doesn't provide much cause for optimism about using these same tactics in Damascus.
Let me get this straight. The US is supposed to bomb Syrian military targets because (probably) one or more of its military units used what seems to be poison gas (possibly sarin) on civilian populations, the same populations it routinely bombs with conventional warheads. The proposed bombing is an expressive act: while most acknowledge that bombing these targets will advance no military aim, it will express our outrage over violation of treaties banning chemical weapons. Speech, apparently, or bringing charges against Assad et. al. at an international tribunal, is less expressive than blowing things up.
This march to more war is set to the drumbeat of 'right to protect' (R2P) reasoning, an attractive but troubling ideology I've written about previously here and here. Its application to the Syrian situation is particularly disturbing given likely outcomes.
If the bombing will not alter the balance of power in the Syrian civil war, then Assad will stay in power, until perhaps, his brother or someone else in his circle overthrows him.The big winner will be Assad ally Iran. If the bombing does alter the balance of power in the civil war,and the opposition takes control, then the different factions will fight each other. The strongest seems to be an al-Qaeda knock-off, so if bombing leads to regime overthrow, the winner is likely to be al-Qaeda.
The talking heads on tv keep saying:'we can't sit idly by while a regime is gassing its own children. We have to express our condemnation. We have to show him that line.' Ok, so far, so good. Only, is the only alternative to 'standing idly by' bombing some military and infrastructure targets? Is blowing shit up the only way 'we' can express ourselves?
(cross-posted at Possible Experience)