Syrian Electronic Army

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), is a group of computer hackers supervised by the Syrian Assad regime. Using spamming, defacement, malware (including the Blackwormtool), phishing, and denial of service attacks, it mainly targets political opposition groups and western websites including news organizations and human rights groups. The Syrian Electronic Army claims to be "a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria", however the SEA is believed by experts to be "a state-supervised operation"^[ that is linked to the Assad regime.The SEA is thought to be the first public, virtual army in the Arab worldto openly launch cyber attacks on its opponents.

Activities

The SEA's tone and style vary widely from the serious and openly political to ironic statements intended as often critical or pointed humor: SEA had "Exclusive: Terror is striking the #USA and #Obama is Shamelessly in Bed with Al-Qaeda" tweeted from the Twitter account of 60 Minutes, and in July 2012 posted "Do you think Saudi and Qatar should keep funding armed gangs in Syria in order to topple the regime? #Syria," from Al Jazeera's Twitter account before the message was removed. In another attack, members of SEA used the BBC Weather Channel Twitter account to post the headline, "Saudi weather station down due to head on-collision with camel." One commentator notes that "[SEA] volunteers might include Syrian diaspora; some of their hacks have used colloquial English and redditmemes. After Washington Post reporter Max Fisher called their jokes unfunny, one hacker associated with the group told a Vice interview 'haters gonna hate.'"