Microsoft’s Skype website Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

Hacking, as unethical as it sounds, has always attracted the brains of computer science interest. Especially, those with the intent of undertaking challenges and others with a mind of revenge. Even if there are situations where hacking is ethical, especially to protect yourself and your circle from imminent dangers (which is precisely why we need to attend ‘ethical hacking’ workshops), people indulge in treading to the advanced side of the subject.

Microsoft has been under such trouble for a few days now. Skype social media resources were said to be hacked recently by the Syrian Electronic Army. And within the ten days they spent in dealing with the issue, one of the official twitter accounts – @MSFTNews – was hijacked. Even though the malicious tweets were deleted in a small time span, it doesn’t change the fact that a large number of people have read the tweets. The tweets tell us that ‘Syrian Electronic Army Was Here’ after which, a small flood of such tweets were sent. You can see a few of them in the screenshot below.

Likewise, on January 10th, which is the death anniversary of a hacker Aaron Swartz, who is the co-founder of Reddit, Creative Commons and Demand Progress, Anonymous has indulged in hacking the MIT website. The website’s title was changed to THE DAY WE FIGHT BACK and it was defaced for about an hour.

Interestingly, Anonymous has directed the visitors of this website (when they click on the the red ‘THE DAY WE FIGHT BACK’) to the website for “The Day We Fight Back,” which is a protest on February 11, 2014 against surveillance. If something related to hacking happens then too, we will have no surprises.