The U.S. Army’s official website was taken down Monday by hackers who claim they were the Syrian Electronic Army.
The attack forced the Army to take army.mil offline to protect from further damage.
The hacking comes less than a week after the discovery of Chinese hackers breaking into several important federal government servers that housed the personal information of millions of federal employees.
“Today an element of the Army.mil service provider’s content was compromised,” Army Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost said in a statement. “After this came to our attention, the Army took appropriate preventive measures to ensure there was no breach of Army data by taking down the website temporarily.”
The Syrian Electronic Army launched in 2011 with a stated goal of attacking the enemies of the Syrian government. They claim to not be officially connected to the Syrian government.
The Army has been the target of hacking in the recent past. Five months ago the website was hit by pro-ISIS hackers who posted messages on the Army’s YouTube and twitter accounts.
A shocking new report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) says that terrorist hackers could use the on-board Wi-Fi of an airplane to take control and bring it down.
The GAO report doesn’t suggest it would be easy for the hackers to bring down the places but that they could do it through the current Wi-Fi technology. The report says the “worst case scenario” would be a terrorist on a plane with a laptop. The terrorist could use the on-board Wi-Fi to take control of the plane from their seat.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee said that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) needs to work quickly to solve this deficiency in airline security.
“According to cybersecurity experts we interviewed, Internet connectivity in the cabin should be considered a direct link between the aircraft and the outside world, which includes potential malicious actors,” the report states.
The report follows a separate GAO report that determined the FAA’s system for building planes was at “increased and unnecessary risk” for being hacked.