A Thanksgiving-day attack saddled several news media websites with pop-up messages promoting the Syrian Electronic Army hacking group.

Among those the attack affected were two UK newspapers, the Independent and the Telegraph, as well as CNBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., and the Boston Globe. But the attack was indirect, relying on an Internet-address switcheroo involving services provided by a partner, Gigya, a startup that handles customer identity matters.

The attack was a variation on earlier Syrian Electronic Army methods. The group didn’t gain access to Gigya servers, but instead redirected its Internet traffic to its own servers. Those servers showed a pop-up message that read, “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.” The Independent reported that the redirection took place after Gigya’s Domain Name System (DNS) Internet address records were altered through GoDaddy, a company that handles those matters.

Gigya on Thursday reassured customers that the issue has been resolved and no harm to actual websites was done.

Read the Full Article: Source – c|net
http://www.cnet.com/news/syrian-electronic-army-attack-spreads-pop-ups-across-news-sites/

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