The White House said Monday it couldn’t confirm reports that President Obama’s Twitter feed has been hacked by a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said he wasn’t aware of the report but would look into it. The Syrian Electronic Army itself already had claimed credit Monday afternoon.
An innocuous-looking tweet about immigration reform was posted to Mr. Obama’s official account, @BarackObama, on Monday, but included a link to a video decrying abuses by insurgents and Islamist rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
Later on Monday afternoon, the @barackobama account tweet had not changed but the link now went to a Washington Post article about a Republican congressman supporting comprehensive immigration reform. That the URL was the same (https://OFA.BO/hb11NM) suggests that it was the linking service that was hacked and not Mr. Obama’s Twitter account per se.
Numerous items were posted to the president’s Twitter and Facebook accounts with links to Syrian pro-government propaganda, attacks on Mr. Obama, and boastful claims of credit.
According to its profile page, the @barackobama account is run by his Organizing for Action group and only the tweets signed “bo” are actually written by the president personally. The hacked tweet was not one of the signed ones.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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