Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

POLITICAL OR MORAL HACKERS?
It goes without saying that the more this group hacks and takes ownership for the 
hacking and phishing attacks, the more the media start covering stories about them 
and the more well-known they become. It is generally thought that they are not doing 
anything new or unusual in relation to the technical side of the attacks (basic phish-
ing attacks and DOS attacks). However, these have been effective enough to cause 
inconvenience for companies such as Microsoft (who believes it is possible that their 
staff's social media accounts have been compromised—see Chapter 3).
It is clear from the closing down of SEAs social media sites and the re-opening 
of them hours later that this group understands the need to have an online social 

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Political/publicity/self-actualization: the case of the syrian electronic army
media presence in order to be a continued and renowned threat. On their current 
Facebook page they claim to be a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and 
three hours after re-instating a profile page they had 1600 “likes” whilst their twit-
ter followers jumped from 10,000 in the first weeks of January to 12,500. They 
undoubtedly have some public backing although without conducting an analysis 
of the Facebook users who have liked the page and an analysis of their twitter fol-
lowers it is difficult to categorically know who is backing them (see Chapter 10 for 
further discussion).
Before the SEA website (
www.SEA.sy
) was removed from Google searches it 
contained detailed information about the attacks they have instigated and also de-
tailed why they had carried them out. They referred to hacks as achievements once 
again re-enforcing the argument that to be affective they need to hack high-profile or-
ganizations—and ensure that there is media coverage in order for them to re-enforce 
their notoriety—but also ensure their voice is being heard.