US Army Website Hit By Cyber Attack

The website of the US Army was taken down on Monday, following a cyber-attack.

The American military confirmed it had to take the site down following the breach, to analyse the extent of the breach and prevent further damage, BBC News said in a report.

The Syrian Electronic Army – which supports President Bashar al-Assad – says it was behind the attack.

“The army took appropriate preventive measures to ensure there was no breach of army data by taking down the website temporarily,” BBC News quotes Brig Gen Malcolm Frost as saying.

Earlier in the year, US President Barack Obama acknowledged that the nation and the economy faced enormous vulnerabilities from such attacks.

Back in December 2014, the same group took responsibility for the cyber-attack on The International Business Times. It is one of the only openly state-sponsored hacking groups, with its own Twitter account and site, we wrote back then.

Not only did the Syrian Electronic Army get inside the site, it took over the CMS (content management system) and deleted an article relating to the Syrian violence.

State-sponsored cyber-attacks have become increasingly frequent. China has recently admitted having a cyber-warfare division, and the US have brought Japan under its cyber defence umbrella.

Last Thursday it was reported that the Russians were behind a cyber-attack on the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.

Der Spiegel said techies had finally managed to read parts of the source code and now suspect that the Kremlin is behind the infiltration. The malware apparently closely resembles that used in a 2014 attack on a German data network.