How Syrian Electronic Army Hacked Email Accounts of Assad’s Opponents

On November 19, 2013, Dan Layman received a disconcerting email from a fake address admin@fbi-useless.gov.

The culprit is the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), the popular group of hackers aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which in the past has hacked high-profile targets including Microsoft, eBay and PayPal.
The SEA claims to have also hacked into the email accounts of Louay Sakka, founder of the SSG; Mazen Asbahi, the former president of the SSG; and Oubai Shahbandar, a former Pentagon analyst and an advisor to the Syrian Opposition Coalition.
The motive is the cyber espionage, the members of SEA launched the campaign at the end of 2013 but there was no news about the operation until now. SEA conducted targeted spear phishing attacks against a number of high-profile people in the Syrian opposition, including Salim Idris, the chief of staff of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free Syrian Army.
The SEA confirmed have hacked seven high-profile people and offered to Motherboard the proof of the attack, but security experts speculate that many other individuals fell victim of the operation.
The SEA has stolen from the victims any information related activities against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
According to the revelation of a SEA member, the Layman email account was simply hacked through brute force attack that revealed the use of “easy and weak” passwords made by the political exponent. The SEA tried to compromise the Layman’s network of contacts by controlling the Layman’s email account. Among the targets are members of the Free Syrian Army and of the Syrian Support Group.
Motherboard examined a collection of screenshots provided by SEA as evidence of the attack that report data stolen from the dissidents’ email accounts, including the Idris’s passport and the names of SSG collaborators in Syria.
The SEA member Th3 Pr0 told Motherboard that the group is aware about the plan to subvert the regime, despite no data appears to be related to military secrets.
But SEA confirmed to have access to the victim’s accounts for a long time. The news of hacking operation against dissidents in Syria is not a novelty. In February, security firm FireEye revealed that hackers tapped into Syrian opposition’s computers and have stolen gigabytes of secret communications and battlefield plans.
The hackers infected the machines of Syrian opposition with malware during flirtatious Skype chats. The hackers targeted several exponents of the Syrian Opposition located in Syria, including armed opposition members, humanitarian aid workers, and media activists.
Security Affairs: http://bit.ly/1cyy5Sz