Breaking: CENTCOM Hacked

Good grief: just as Obama is giving a speech on cybersecurity to the Federal Trade Commission, the Twitter and YouTube accounts of U.S. Central Command—CENTCOM—have been hacked and taken over by someone claiming to be ISIS:

The Twitter account for U.S. Central Command was hacked Monday while President Barack Obama was delivering an address about cybersecurity at the Federal Trade Commission.

The hack, by an individual or group claiming to be aligned with the Islamic State, took place shortly before 12:30 p.m. on Monday. The first tweet following the hack read, “AMERICAN SOLDIERS, WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS,” and linked to a longer statement threatening American soldiers and their families. The hackers also targeted Centcom’s YouTube page, posting ISIS propaganda videos.

Central Command is the Department of Defense command overseeing the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The statement read, in part, “In 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.”

Here’s a screen cap:

Centcom copy

The accounts have been suspended, but what the hell?  As Glenn Reynolds likes to say, the country’s in the very best of hands.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses