Syrian President Bashar Assad's E-mail-Id Hack Could Lead To "Cyber Warfare"
Earlier in a operation called #OpSyria hacker collective Anonymous has targeted the Syrian Cyber fence. First they hacked and defaced the Syrian Ministry of Defence then TV Network Of Syrian Pro-Government & finally Syrian president Bashar Assad been targeted by the hacker. Anonymous gained access to 78 different e-mail accounts at the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs, including that of the Minister of Presidential Affairs, Mansour Fadlallah Azzam, and Assad's media adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban. Sadly, it's clear that no one bothered to give Assad's office a lesson in basic computer security, because several of the accounts apparently had the password 12345. Britain's newspaper Guardian gathered 3,000 emails passed on by a source in the Syrian opposition reveals a wealth of private information – including family photographs and videos, a scan of the president's identity card and a birth certificate belonging to a family member – that would be difficult for even the best resourced hoaxer or intelligence agency to gather or fabricate. The sam@alshahba.com and ak@alshahba.com accounts that activists say were used by Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma, communicate regularly and in affectionate terms with the wider family and advisers, some of whose email addresses are easily verified. Events and speeches mentioned in the emails tally with the timings of real events. The "sam" and "ak" accounts were also monitored contemporaneously by activists who say the protagonists reacted in real time to events on the ground in Syria.
Review:-
Cyber warfare in coming years, experts increasingly believe, could be as much about trying to protect or disseminate particularly sensitive pieces of information as about plotting cyber attacks on essential national infrastructure. "It's the first time insurgents have gained access to a regime's high-level communications during an uprising," says John Bassett, a former senior official at British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
"That could possibly be a significant turning point in the development of cyber warfare."
Some security experts doubt Syria's fragmented opposition would have had the capacity to access the e-mails without outside help, but others say those in power in Damascus may simply have been careless. The Syrian opposition say they were given details of the passwords by an internal regime source. It is a tool that could become increasingly popular. According To Guardian:-
There are several email conversations in which "Sam" and Bashar are clearly identified as the same person. In November, for example, Hadeel al-Ali, Assad's press assistant, emailed sam@alshahba.com about an interview Assad had given to a student activist, Hussam Arian, six months earlier. She attached a picture of Arian with Assad, and screenshots of the student's Facebook page, which featured the article. She said to "Sam": "I took many shots of the page of Hussam Arian and the article he wrote about you."
Another email to the address from Asma relates: "Fares closed all your twitter accounts!" Fares Kallas is Asma al-Assad's assistant, and other emails in the chain show that he had asked Twitter to close several fake accounts purporting to belong to Bashar.
In Asma's case, there are a host of emails sent between ak@alshahba.com and Asma al-Assad's family which offer compelling proof. Many emails sent to "ak" from her family begin "Hi Asma", and one of her family's email header lists ak@alshahba.com as Asma Akhras, Asma al-Assad's maiden name.
There are many other examples of family members sending affectionate emails to Asma at the "ak" account. On 21 November 2011, one of her brothers sent her photos of their father's recent birthday party, with the subject line "Dad's birthday 2011". The photos show Asma together with identifiable family members standing in a kitchen. The brother also circulated the photos to her other brother.
"That could possibly be a significant turning point in the development of cyber warfare."
Some security experts doubt Syria's fragmented opposition would have had the capacity to access the e-mails without outside help, but others say those in power in Damascus may simply have been careless. The Syrian opposition say they were given details of the passwords by an internal regime source. It is a tool that could become increasingly popular. According To Guardian:-
There are several email conversations in which "Sam" and Bashar are clearly identified as the same person. In November, for example, Hadeel al-Ali, Assad's press assistant, emailed sam@alshahba.com about an interview Assad had given to a student activist, Hussam Arian, six months earlier. She attached a picture of Arian with Assad, and screenshots of the student's Facebook page, which featured the article. She said to "Sam": "I took many shots of the page of Hussam Arian and the article he wrote about you."
Another email to the address from Asma relates: "Fares closed all your twitter accounts!" Fares Kallas is Asma al-Assad's assistant, and other emails in the chain show that he had asked Twitter to close several fake accounts purporting to belong to Bashar.
In Asma's case, there are a host of emails sent between ak@alshahba.com and Asma al-Assad's family which offer compelling proof. Many emails sent to "ak" from her family begin "Hi Asma", and one of her family's email header lists ak@alshahba.com as Asma Akhras, Asma al-Assad's maiden name.
There are many other examples of family members sending affectionate emails to Asma at the "ak" account. On 21 November 2011, one of her brothers sent her photos of their father's recent birthday party, with the subject line "Dad's birthday 2011". The photos show Asma together with identifiable family members standing in a kitchen. The brother also circulated the photos to her other brother.
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