Skype’s social media properties and blogs were hijacked yesterday, with the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacker group loyal to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, taking resposibility for the attack.
The group posted a number of messages — including accusations that Skype parent Microsoft was selling user data to the United States government — to the company’s blog, Twitter account and Facebook page.
For who missed it. #SEA pic.twitter.com/9xG4N8kedi
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) January 1, 2014
The social media postings have since been deleted, and Skype has taken its blogs offline. In a post to its Twitter account, the company said that the attackers were not able to gain access to any sensitive user data, though it did not address their accusations.
You may have noticed our social media properties were targeted today. No user info was compromised. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.
— Skype (@Skype) January 2, 2014
The SEA’s claims hearken back to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, which claimed that the NSA was able to tap Skype calls, and released user data from Hotmail and Outlook.com to the U.S. government. Microsoft said that it only released data when required by court order.
We’ve reached out to Skype for more information on how the attackers were able to get access to all of those accounts, and will update this post if we hear back.
UPDATE: Skype provided GeekWire with the following statement via email: “We recently became aware of a targeted cyber-attack that led to access to Skype’s social media properties, but these credentials were quickly reset. No user information was compromised.”