Reuters hacked, fake news posted

Update on August 5 - Reuters Twitter account hacked

Thomson Reuters was hacked on Friday. The publication's blogging platform was breached and a false story about an alleged interview with a Syrian rebel leader was posted, the company has confirmed.

"Reuters.com was a target of a hack on Friday," the company said in a statement. "Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists. Reuters did not carry out such an interview and the posting has been deleted."

The phony interview was with Riad al-Assad, the head of the Free Syrian Army, who apparently said his forces were pulling back from the northern province of Aleppo after repeated battles with the Syrian Army. As far as we know, this is completely false.

The Free Syrian Army issued a statement saying that the interview never took place and blamed President Bashar al-Assad's government for planting the story. "(It) was fabricated by the regime, as it seems the news agency was hacked," the statement said.

While Reuters confirmed the hack, the firm said it does not yet have any information on the party responsible for the fake news. The publication took down its blogging platform on Friday to fix the problem. A quick check shows that blogs.reuters.com is indeed down at the time of writing.

We've seen this happen before: Al Arabiya Facebook Page hacked, fake Syria news posted. A Facebook Page is one thing, however, and a major website like Reuters is a completely different one.

The ongoing massive uprising in Syria began in January 2011, as part of the wider Arab Spring. The opposition is dominated by Sunni Muslims, whereas the leading government figures are Alawite Muslims.

Protesters are demanding the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, want to overthrow his government, and are looking to end nearly five decades of Ba'ath Party rule. In response, the Syrian government has deployed the Syrian Army, resulting in the death of more than 10,000 civilians and soldiers. Many more have been injured, and tens of thousands of protesters have been imprisoned.

Update on August 5 - Reuters Twitter account hacked

See also:

• Syria disconnects itself from the Internet for 40 minutes
• Syria pushing malware via Skype to spy on activists
• Indonesia blocks 1 million porn sites, is just getting started
• Anonymous, hacktivists helped WikiLeaks with 'Syrian Files'
• Iran state TV: The BBC hacked us
• China orders video sites to censor vulgarity, violence, porn