Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

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CHAPTER 9
Understanding the situational awareness in cybercrimes
Schneier claimed in August 2013 that the SEA had attacked the websites of 
the New York Times, Twitter, the Huffington Post amongst others although they 
had not done this directly but had gone through an Australian domain name called 
Melbourne IT. However, in January 2014, they made a number of “attacks” on the 
following organizations:
CNN
The SEA targeted the twitter and Facebook accounts of CNN. They laid claim to an 
attack on CNN (January 2014) advising on their twitter feed that
Tonight, the #SEA decided to retaliate against #CNN's viciously lying reporting 
aimed at prolonging the suffering in #Syria…#CNN used its usual formula of 
present unverifiable information as truth, adopting a report by Qataris against 
#Syria…Instead of any actual journalism, #CNN turned into a loud horn calling 
for the destruction of the #Syria-n state…US media strategy is now to hide the 
fact that the CIA controls and funds Al Qaeda by blaming #Syria instead for their 
terror #SEA…The #SEA will not stop to pursue these liars and will expose them 
and their methods for the world to see.
Given that their one of their main motivations is deemed to be political mobiliza-
tion it is not surprising to see that the justification for the attack by SEA relates to the 
supposed misreporting about what is happening in Syria by CNN.
The SEA sent out five tweets before the CNN twitter feed was re-instated:
Syrian Electronics Army was here…Stop lying…All your reports are fake! via 
@Official_SEA16 #SEA
Long live #Syria via @Official_SEA16 #SEA ow.ly/i/4nt9l
Obama Bin Laden the lord of terror is brewing lies that the Syrian state controls 
Al Qaeda
For 3 years Al Qaeda has been destroyed the Syrian state but they think you're 
stupid enough to believe it
DON'T FORGET: Al Qaeda is Al CIA da. Funded, armed 
and controlled. (
http://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelrusch/
syrian-electronic-army-hacks-cnns-twitter-account
)
Of course the content of these tweets can neither be confirmed nor denied: they are 
simply recorded for information. A CNN statement advised that the tweets were re-
moved immediately and the affected accounts secured (
Shoichet, 2014
).
ANGRY BIRDS
In January 2014 the AngryBirds website was defaced. The angry birds logo was 
changed to “spying birds” with an NSA logo placed over one of the apps logos. 
This was thought to be carried out by a friend of SEA. Their twitter account said the 
following:

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