Categories: OLD Media Moves

Financial Times website is hacked

The Financial Times is the latest news outlet to be hacked by supporters of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, following a phishing attack on the company’s email accounts.

Henry Mance of The Financial Times writes, “Twelve posts entitled ‘Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army’ appeared on the FT’s tech blog between 12.38pm and 12.42pm on Friday, with official Twitter feeds also disrupted.

“‘We have now locked those accounts and are grateful for Twitter’s help on this,’ said Robert Shrimsley, the managing editor of FT.com.

“The Syrian Electronic Army, a group of anonymous hackers who claim that Arab and western media have presented a biased view of the country’s civil war, has previously compromised news organisations including the Associated Press, the BBC and Al Jazeera.

“Last month a fake AP tweet announcing an attack on the White House caused the Dow Jones to fall nearly 1 per cent within two minutes.

“An individual who said he was with the group interviewed on email by the FT last month said they would target the media of ‘all the countries who support the terrorists groups in Syria.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.