ITV and Sky hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army

Fresh from Twitter implementing two-factor authentication last week, accounts for British based ITV news and Sky were hacked over the weekend.

The Twitter account for ITV News was hacked by members of the Syrian Electronic Army with claims made that British Prime Minister David Cameron had cut funding for education and backed Syrian rebels.

It then followed this with a tweet that read: “Just kidding. The Syrian Electronic Army was here.”

Also, at least six Sky Android apps were hacked, causing a tweet to be sent by a compromised account that encouraged users to remove any apps that had been installed.

The hacking of the apps involved the group replacing all screenshots in the app with images by the hacking group, who also modified the developer website link on all of BSkyB's apps so that it pointed to its page.

This activity resulted in Google pulling all the apps from the Google Play Store.

This is seen as part of a campaign targeting media organisations, which has also hit the Financial Times, BBC, Associated Press and the Guardian, among others. In its activity, the Syrian Electronic Army tends to deface accounts rather than upload malware.

Security blogger Lee Munson said: “I can only imagine what effect this will have on the level of trust afforded to Sky and Google Play, especially the latter, since the major app stores have been quite secure lately with no apps being hacked from within.

“I'm also looking forward to hearing how the hack was achieved as well – my guess is that the signing keys and developer password may have been stolen from Sky, possibly via a socially engineered password?”

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com