Three Syrian Electronic Army Suspects Got Charged by the US

After the attack to independent.co.uk the US Justice managed to find the Hackers responsible for these attacks and charged them for multiple offences. The only small problem is that they live in Syria, so a little bit away from US justice so for the time being they are quite safe.



First seen in 2011, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) claims to support the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They've been linked to hacking the Websites of the US Marine Corps, Microsoft, Skype, eBay and PayPal. Arrest warrants have been issued for the suspects:

On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) revealed in two unsealed criminal complaints the three Syrian nationals have been charged with multiple offences related to computer hacking.

In addition, two fugitives have been added to the FBI's "Most wanted" list, according to a DoJ press release. However, they are believed to be in Syria and out of reach of law enforcement.

[...] In the US District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, 22-year-old Ahmad Umar Agha, also known as "The Pro," and Firas "The Shadow" Dardar, 27, were charged with engaging in a terrorism hoaxes, attempting to incite mutiny in US armed forces, unauthorised access to and damage to computer systems, access device fraud and the "illicit possession of authentication features."

Dadar and another suspect, 36-year-old Peter Romar, were also charged with unauthorized access to and damage of computer systems, extortion, money laundering, wire fraud, violations of the Syrian Sanctions Regulations and unlawful communication.

[...] In relation to the two additional Syrian nationals now wanted by US law enforcement, the FBI is offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading to their capture.

 

This 3 "hackers" are probably at the best script kiddies.

This is a report about what they actually did.

The Independent is currently displaying a message that "You've been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)." So are several other high profile sites.

The Guardian reports:

A portion of visitors to all those sites are presented with a blank screen and a javascript popup telling them “you have been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army”. The group apparently exploited a fault with a content delivery network (CDN).

Blame fell on the ad network due to the sporadic nature of the outages, which are difficult to replicate and spread over a number of sites.

Such symptoms are common for attacks delivered through an ad or content delivery network, which serves third-party code across a number of websites.

 

Basically they caused an error and displayed a message with their "logo. "You've been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)." Offcourse they got "caught", and a research about everything they have done so far will be done. If you are thinking about start hacking this is an excellent way to understand why it is a very bad idea. Once you get on someones "radar" they will dig up everything they can about you, and if you end up stealing 10$ they will manage to make you pay 10.000.000 :)

 

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