James Delahunty
15 Aug 2013 18:36
The Washington Post has said that its website was hacked by the supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The website of Time and CNN were also reportedly caught up in the hack that targeted a third-party link recommendation service Outbrain,
"We are aware that Outbrain was hacked earlier today and we took down service as soon as it was apparent," Outbrain revealed on its blog.
"The breach now seems to be secured and the hackers blocked out, but we are keeping the service down for a little longer until we can be sure it's safe to turn it back on securely."
Links on the effected news sites redirected users to the website of the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA). The Washington Post said it was working to resolve the issue, while CNN said it quickly identified the threat and disabled the third party plug-in.
Time spokesman Daniel Kile said that the Time website itself had not been directly effected, only the Outbrain-powered module on Time's pages.