A hacker group backing the Syrian government claimed responsibility for hacking the official website of the US Army, just hours after President Obama called for new cybersecurity laws at the G-7 summit in Germany.
Army.mil was still down Monday afternoon. Loading a cached version of the site resulted in pop-ups proclaiming the site was “Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army,” and messages such as “Stop training the terrorists!” and “Your government is corrupt don’t listen to it!” reported the National Journal.
Hackers calling themselves the Syrian Electronic Army swiftly took responsibility for the attack, posting images on their Twitter account.
Another image indicated the hackers used the Limelight content management system’s control panel to take control of the site.
US Army officials said the website was taken down temporarily, after its home page was compromised. “The Army took appropriate preventative measure to ensure there was no breach of Army data,” Army spokesman Brigadier General Malcolm Frost said in a statement.
Monday’s attack may have been the first breach of a website directly operated by the US military. In January, a group calling itself the “Cyber Caliphate” hijacked the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), posting links to documents they claimed to be confidential files pilfered from US military computers.
CENTCOM said its operational military networks “were not compromised and there was no operational impact,” and denied any leaks of classified information, adding that it considered the hack “purely as a case of cybervandalism.”