I’m getting reports from people reading the Daily Telegraph web site saying that a dialog box saying “You have been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)”. The implication is that their PCs have been compromised, but I have no evidence that this is actually true. The web sites of the newspapers do appear to have been breached, however, in order to cause the pop-ups to appear.
Reports already exist of the problems with the Independent and the Evening Standard, with a time of 12:20 GMT, but the Telegraph problem appears to be new.
The problems don’t appear on all pages of the Telegraph – in fact the problem seems to be on the Alex cartoon only. The Independent has been off-line, but at time of writing is back – but slow.
Given the preponderance of adverts on this page, one possible method of attack could be via the advert feed. It certainly doesn’t happen of every access. However, reports suggest of a redirect to a page showing the Syrian logo. This could be JavaScript, a server change or a DNS hijack. People at the papers probably know which, but they’re a bit busy right now…