SEA hack President Obama's Twitter and Facebook accounts

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) claim to have hacked the Twitter and Facebook accounts of President Obama. They also claim to have hacked Obama's re-election web site.

Tweets and updates were made to the president’s Facebook account on Monday. It contained links to the pro-Assad hacktivist collective.

Apparently, the hackers gained access by hacking into the staff emails at the Presidents non-profit, Organizing For Action (OFA), which runs Obama’s website. The staff email accounts did not have two step verification on their email accounts.

According to Symantec:



Two-factor authentication for email is an important security feature that should be enabled. In the scenarios such as the one above, two-factor authentication would have helped the staff members of OFA mitigate an attempt by hackers to obtain access to the Obama campaign’s Google Apps email account.

If you are a Google Apps administrator, Symantec Security Response recommends turning on the two-factor authentication feature. Follow these instructions to allow two-factor authentication (2-step verification).

Google Apps administrators also have the option to “enforce” two-factor authentication, making it mandatory for all users of that domain. Please refer to Google’s help page for how to enable this feature.


Obama's social media accounts and web site now appear to be back to normal.