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Updated 7.20am
THE TWITTER ACCOUNT for US Central Command (CentCom), the arm of the Pentagon which handles the Middle East, was broken into today by hackers declaring sympathy for Islamic State.
The hacking comes as President Barack Obama was giving a speech on cyber security. The military was forced to take down its Twitter feed after the attack but the Pentagon played down the incident saying it it amounted to little more than digital vandalism and that no sensitive military computer networks were penetrated.
“Centcom didn’t get hacked. Twitter got hacked,” Colonel Steven Warren told reporters.
“It’s important to keep this whole thing in perspective. This is little more than a cyber prank. It’s an annoyance,” he said. “It in no way compromises our operations.”
Some of the tweets contained the personal details of high-ranking officers and soldiers, specifically threatening the wives and children of military personnel.
One tweet warned US soldiers to ‘watch their back’.
It said that the while the US “and its satellites kill our brothers in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan” they “won’t stop”.
It claimed that the hackers “know everything about your wives and children”.
Another tweet claimed to contain the details of US intelligence on North Korea. However US officials later said none of the information posted was classified and most of the documents are already publicly available.
The image below had appeared previously on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based non-profit organization dedicated to preventing nuclear war.
The hackers appeared to have used screen shots on defence-related topics from other websites, giving the impression that they had stolen secret documents, officials said.
Some of the documents were labelled “FOU,” or ‘for office use only’, which refers to Defence Department documents that are not top secret or classified but normally treated as confidential.
The hacked Twitter feed posted what appeared to be an office phone directory of officers, which was slightly out of date, as well what appeared to be a personal photo taken by troops handling a goat in an office.
CentCom’s YouTube page was also been taken over, with ISIS videos being posted.
It came as US President Barack Obama was giving a speech on the issue of cybersecurity.
After the incident today, White House spokesman John Earnest told reporters they the extent of the incident is being examined but pointed out again that there is “a pretty significant difference between what is a large data breach and the hacking of a Twitter account”.
- With reporting from AFP and Michelle Hennessy. First published 12 January
Zuckerburg was conned. I got Instagram for nothing last week.
Nice
Facebook won’t stop until they own the rights to every cat, kid and boring holiday photo.
I feel like yer man on the bus, stating his lack of knowledge of the workings of tracker mortgages…
It’s a shame that instagram has been sold to Facebook.
However, Kevin systrom et al have to be highly commended for creating an excellent app that grew so quickly and made them so much money in such a short space of time. I don’t blame them at all for selling. I just hope Facebook don’t ruin it’s simplicity.
Giving up 1% of your market cap to take out biggest threat is a savvy move. Facebook showing just why they are one of the smartest companies in existence.
Alice. Glad to see you got that help and are now talking sense
Instagram was good while it lasted … Facebook getting more like Microsoft these days buying growing ideas out …. Pity.
Facebook users will not like this.
This will change it for the worse,they will want geo-tagging on photos..
It seems the software industry is built on the same self perpetuating cycle of bullshit as the financial industry.
When Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion they weren’t paying with cash. Google paid for YT with Google stock which skyrocketed right after, increasing the value of Google. Most people don’t know this purchase was Sequoia Capital, sole investor in YouTube and its partner Michael Moritz who was a board member at Google moving a stack of shares from one pocket to another to increase its value. They were paying, in large part, themselves, to make a groundbreaking impression on the market with the size of the transaction (and it worked, Google stock went up).
Now, I doubt Facebook is buying Instagram with money—they most likely don’t even have a billion dollars to spend. Facebook will buy them with FB shares at a valuation of FB pulled somewhere out of thin air market bubbles are made of.
It is all supposed to make a noise on the market and give Facebook’s IPO a healthy boost. People will jump on FB shares on IPO and investors will exit quickly before they plummet, just like Groupon investors did.
Hi Raf,
Just to clarify – Facebook have used a combination of cash and shares to obtain Instagram. The mix hasn’t been announced yet.
Sinead
I heard today it was 95% shares, 5% cash.
Instagram is alarmingly average as an app. Gets old after about an hour, facebook is well past its best before date but sure, the kids will love it.
“Instagram is capital-efficient with less than 15 employees but over 30 million users.”
I am astounded.
The positives are Instgram’s founders are laughing their way to the bank and an acquisition like this will give developers and designers the impetus to get their ideas out there so they can be the next big thing.
have your say