Microsoft's official blog, along with email and social network handles, have been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), with the group warning that they will publish "the documents of monitoring email accounts by Microsoft".
This new hack comes eleven days after Skype's social media services were hijacked by the same group. Within an hour of the hack the tweets were all removed by Microsoft, but not before they had been saved and retweeted numerous times.
The first sign of a new hack was a retweet from the previous, a warning not to use hotmail, outlook or other email accounts as "they're being monitored by Microsoft". Internet explorer was targeted, with the SEA promoting Firefox and Chrome, the rivals to Microsoft's web browser. Following that, an image of the Syrian national flag was posted along with "The Syrian Electronic Army was here".
Taunting Microsoft
The Microsoft blog was also affected, with several posts made with the titles "Syrian Electronic Army Was Here… Long Live Syria!" with redirects to the group's website.
An SEA member calling themselves "Syrian Eagle" told Mashable that "we can only say that [this hack] is just the beginning". When asked why the SEA were targeting Microsoft, Syrian Eagle replied that Microsoft is monitoring emails and selling data to American intelligence agencies.
The group have gone further to taunt Microsoft when on Saturday they tweeted a supposed photo of an internal company email discussing the hacks. Microsoft have not commented on the recent hack, but responded to the accusation made by the SEA about email monitoring:
"We're actively investigating issues and are focused on protecting our employees and corporate network. Microsoft is sometimes obligated to comply with legal orders from governments around the world and provides customer data only in response to specific, targeted, legal demands."
