In what appeared to be an account hack, a tweet emerged on Microsoft News Twitter account, saying the company sells customer data to the government. The Syrian Electronic Army claims responsibility.
The tweet read:
“Don’t use Microsoft emails(hotmail,outlook),They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments. #SEA @Official_SEA16.”
The accusation might be referred to as a Reverse Scroogling. Or, perhaps, a Microsofting.
As to the perpetrators, the “SEA” hashtag points to the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacking group sympathetic to President Bashar Assad.
The SEA has operated for some time now, hacking its way into places such as a BBC Twitter account.
Indeed, this is the second time this year that the SEA has targeted Microsoft. On New Year’s Day, it attacked Skype’s Twitter and Facebook accounts with similar information.
A follow-up tweet , also issued through the Microsoft News Twitter account, showed an image of the Syrian flag with the message:
“Syrian Electronic Army Was Here via @Official_SEA16 #SEA.”
After the attack, a Microsoft spokesperson offered this statement:
“Microsoft is aware of targeted cyberattacks that temporarily affected the Xbox Support and Microsoft News Twitter accounts. The accounts were quickly reset and we can confirm that no customer information was compromised.”