Syrian Electronic Army Hacks Facebook.com; Domain is Now Restored

The Syrian Electronic Army hacked Facebook.com Wednesday night after breaching the registrar, according to Security Week. The domain was restored in the meantime to “[email protected]”.

The hacking group wished Mark Zuckerberg a happy birthday on Facebook`s 10^th year of existence, and left a message stating that Facebook is now owned by #SEA.

On their Twitter account, the hackers showed how they allegedly changed the three primary registrant contacts. In a follow-up post, they also claimed to have changed nameservers. “We changed the nameservers, but it’s taking too much time…,” they tweeted.

In the meantime, a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable the website’s nameserver information was never altered.

“The company’s registrar, MarkMonitor, is steward to many of the Internet’s biggest brands and does have strong security policies and options in place,” Security Week`s Tech expert Mike Lennon wrote. “It’s likely that while the attackers may have accessed an admin account, the ability to change the DNS records may require further authentication, but that is unclear.”

The hackers also said that MarkMonitor initially took down the domain management portal after being breached.

“We also have a policy where we never comment on clients – including neither confirming nor denying if a company is a client,” MarkMonitor representatives told Security Week.

The Syrian Electronic Army gained international attention after breaching websites and Twitter accounts of reputable media outlets including the Associated Press, the New York Times, BBC News, CNN, and the CBS. In August 2013, the group launched more attacks on The New York Times, Twitter and The Huffington Post by compromising Melbourne IT, their domain registrar.

A couple of days ago, the hacktivists, who support Syria`s President Bashar al-Assad, also breached PayPal and eBay to draw attention to the merchandisers` absence from their country.