After taking over the Twitter account, SEA fired a total of 6 tweets from the hacked Twitter Account of UNICEF. Out of these 6 tweets, 3 tweets were in English and other 3 in Arabic but the text of the message was same. The UNICEF’s Twitter admin were quick to notice the hack and all the tweets were soon deleted. Later on, UNICEF accepted and confirmed the hack through this tweet. — SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) October 2, 2014
Spokesperson from The Syrian Electronic Army told Techworm that the hack was done to let the world know about what happened in the blasts and also to let the world know how many young children died in the blast. A screenshot was provided by Syrian Electronic Army exclusively to Techworm which shows they were having access to the UNICEF’S Twitter account. The screenshot also shows that during the hack the cover photo of the UNICEF’s Twitter account was changed by the Syrian Electronic Army. The changed cover photo was displaying school going children from Syria for a brief period till it was restored by UNICEF administrators.
The blasts happened yesterday on 1st of October, afternoon as children were leaving the Akrameh al-Makhzoumi primary school in Homs. The first explosion was from a car bomb parked and detonated in front of the school, followed minutes later by a suicide bomber who drove by and detonated his explosives-laden car, said the anonymous official. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Homs in months. At least 56 more people were wounded in the incident, aljazeera reported. As of now, no militant group has taken the responsibility for the bomb blasts though report suggested that Syrian rebels fighting to oust Assad regime from Syria may have carried out the bombings. SEA has not commented over how they hacked into the Account, but it is possible that it was a phishing attack which compromised the twitter Account of UNICEF. While the Syrian Electronic Army have been targeting the western media, and U.S Government websites, this hack brings on a entirely different story with itself. Update: Apparently 7 tweets were fired from the hacked Account, one of which read “by @official_SEA16” which was pinned to the profile page of the UNICEF until it was deleted.
