Twitter and YouTube accounts belonging to the U.S. Central Command were compromised Monday and displayed what attackers described as sensitive documents taken from Department of Defense computers. The accounts were quickly suspended.
ISIS-Connected Hackers Hit U.S. Military Twitter, YouTube Accounts
The attackers shared links to documents said to have been stolen from mobile devices belonging to U.S. military personnel.
Twitter
“We can confirm that the CENTCOM Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised earlier today,” said a spokesman. “We are taking appropriate measures to address the matter. We have no further information to provide at this time.”
The attack came to light just as President Obama was speaking on the subject of cyber security at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington.
The attackers claimed to be representatives of the Islamic State, an extremist group that has taken control of several areas of Iraq and Syria and which has been under attack by U.S.-led air strikes.
The Twitter account included screen-capture images of documents that appeared to describe scenarios involving hypothetical military conflicts with North Korea and China.
A message also appeared on Pastebin — a site used for sharing text files often used by hackers — containing links to caches of documents said to have been taken from mobile devices belonging to Department of Defense personnel.
The message reads:
Pentagon networks hacked
AMERICAN SOLDIERS,
WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS. #CyberCaliphateIn the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the CyberCaliphate under the auspices of ISIS continues its CyberJihad. While the US and its satellites kill our brothers in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan we broke into your networks and personal devices and know everything about you.
You’ll see no mercy infidels. ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base. With Allah’s permission we are in CENTCOM now.
We won’t stop! We know everything about you, your wives and children.
U.S. soldiers! We’re watching you!
Here’s a part of confidential data from your mobile devices:
The message goes on to list four links to collections of documents on file-sharing sites.
Here’s what the Twitter and YouTube accounts looked like while they were in the control of the attackers.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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