Key Military Command's Twitter Site Hacked
WASHINGTON (WJZ) -- A Pentagon Twitter account was hacked! The feds are scrambling to track the culprit, but it appears Islamic State sympathizers have struck for the second time in two weeks.
Christie Ileto has more.
The first one happened last week right here in Maryland. Monday's happened, ironically enough, just as President Barack Obama was giving a big speech about cybersecurity. Now the FBI is investigating as hackers claim to be on US soil.
The Twitter account of the US Military's central command was hacked by alleged Islamic State sympathizers. CENTCOM oversees military campaigns against ISIS but both its Twitter and Youtube accounts are offline after a string of propaganda videoes and threatening messages like "American soldiers, we're coming, watch your back."
"This is something that we're obviously looking into and something that we're taking seriously," a White House spokesman said Monday.
"These hacks were targeting social media sites and they weren't government servers," said Markus Rauschecker, University of Maryland's Center of Health and Homeland Security.
CENTCOM says no military networks were compromised, though hackers did leak lists of
personnel information with soldiers' names.
"The information they ended up posting seems to be publicly available. There's nothing that's confidential or classified," Rauschecker said.
This comes just a week after a Maryland news station's Twitter account was hacked using the same name, Cyber Caliphate.
"Our Twitter password had been changed and we were locked out," said a WBOC official.
WBOC's website was changed to read "I Love ISIS" and was signed Cyber Caliphate.
"Any of these terror groups are wanting to assert themselves in any way that they can," Rauschecker said. "If they're able to hack a US government or Defense Department, that's a feather in their cap."
The feds are working to strengthen network security to prevent a third round of cyber vandalism.
CENTCOM's Facebook page was not hacked.
The hacker group Anonymous said on Twitter it had traced the hack and it originated somewhere in Maryland.
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