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It all went by so fast, but I remember happy tears and feelings of relief! 😅 I felt incredibly fortunate in being able to share the topic of mental health for my senior capstone project, a subject so dear to me. Thank you to everyone who came to support me, it really did mean the world! ❤️ #MentalHealthAwareness #EndStigma #PacificUniversity #SeniorCapstoneProject #GoBoxers #HiMa #CountDownToGraduation #SiSePuede (at Pacific University)

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Syrian Electronic Army (Media Outlet hacks, 2013-2014)

Authors: Kimberly, Orion, Drew, Juliana

Who are they?

The Syrian Electronic Army are a group of hackers that formed in 2011 to show support to the government of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. They use spamming, malware, change websites, phishing and denial of service attacks to target western news sources, political opposers, human rights groups, and websites that are neutral to the Syrian conflict. The Syrian Electronic Army, called SEA, are considered hacktivists because of the fact that they are pro-government and attack popular media sources, like the New York Times and the Huffington Post UK. Created in 2011, there’s a group of about 20 hackers that work from Syria and work under president Bashar al-Assad. They interact mainly on websites, like Facebook and Twitter, and it is unknown at the moment if they meet face to face. They all share a similar goal, however, and that is to have a public internet army to cyber attack enemies online. Their history is relatively unknown, only surfacing onto the Internet in 2011. The concept has always stayed the same, which is to online attack places that don’t agree with president al-Assad and his regime. Their goals are to get people involved through these attacks and educate those who aren’t familiar with what is going on in Syria. They’ve attacked Harvard, the U.S. marines, Twitter accounts, various news sources, and though they are successful, they don’t mean anything. They just tell the websites they’ve hacked “you’ve been hacked” and leave it as that. They claim to have seen important information but never choose to use it, so it’s mostly for show with them in regards to hacking. They don’t communicate with the Internet directly, they instead hack important Twitter and news sources to promote themselves, often saying “follow us for the truth”, suggesting that the news sources people follow aren’t the truth about what’s going on in Syria. The culture that exists around them is obviously the Syrian culture, but they don’t often use that as a reason for what they do, it’s for their president al-Assad and wanting to get the “truth” about what’s going on in Syria and the war. It tells us that they are loyal to their president and his regime, and that’s about it. They really aren’t a threatening force to people and are often seen as a joke. Their attacks have cause embarrassment on their movement, and they have dropped the stock market at one point, and have leaked false information about President Obama, otherwise they seem harmless. They have claimed to have important information but have not chosen to leak it, and whenever websites do get hacked it’s normally fixed easily and forgotten about. They may have a strong reason for what they are doing, but the way that they are going about it is non-threatening.

The Hack/Operation:

The Syrian Electronic Army is an interesting organization. Most of the attacks are typically low tech. However these attacks are very effective- theoretically they have stolen large amounts of data and have costed millions in damage. The data they have taken is usually personal information, but they do not use this data and rarely put it on social media. The millions in damage come from the cost for investigations and damage repair of these organizations. Some of the attacks have been on  Harvard, CNN, Turkey, ITV, Qatar Foundation, Twitter, Skype, US Marines, NY Times, Associated Press, Financial Times, Al Jazeera, France 24, and other media sources worldwide. Other damage consist of embarrassment, leaked information, and once a drop in the stock market due to the attack on AP Twitter. This attack caused panic in the stocks by claiming bombs in the White House went off, hurting President Obama. The goals of the SEA mainly are propaganda and financial support. There does not seem to be much influence in these hacks or conditions in which they are seeking. Their attacks do not highlight or expose any top secret files. These attacks usually play out by a website or profile being defaced by the redirecting of the DNS- domain name system. Some attacks lead to pop ups stating “You’ve been hacked.”  Organizations handle being hacked by repairing the damage and letting individuals know their information may have been taken. Because the damage is not serious, many organizations only repair how the hacked happen and pay no further attention to it.

Context:

Hacking groups are just like political movements. They have different skill sets and target different areas of the Internet but do it for typically the same cause. They have chat rooms set up to talk about what their next moves will be and to combine the skill sets in order to combat the person or the group they have decided to target. Hackers believe in the right to freedom of speech and believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn by exercising this right. This is their political stance and why their messages come as political. They want to use their rights and have others join them by using their rights as well. Another viewpoint on a hacker’s is that they are considered an immune system. They don’t always work for the best reasons or you get sick and they don’t work to help you but, they also find and stop things that you can’t see. This gives them a great amount of power to be used for good and to stop something bad to happen, but some abuse their power and this causes issues and break things just because they can.

Analysis:

Hacking falls under coding and security as well as privacy. Hackers use coding and algorithms in order to have the ability to get to what they want and have the ability to control sites and the Internet in general. The security of the Internet is at risk due to these codes and anything that is put online. This puts everyone who connects to the Internet at risk because hackers can get ahold of any of your accounts that have been put online as well as anything put onto that device. This security breach can cause issues for not only an individual but for governments. They can get into secured files as well as documents on computers with information that should not be seen by most people. This can also be a good thing because it allows hackers to see what is going on in some parts of the world or even stop a country's Internet use like what happened in North Korea not to long ago. Hackers shut down the connection to the Internet for most of the entire country and set the government back due to the loss of Internet. The hackers invade privacy because of the issues with security. If a computer can track you without your knowledge, think of how a hacker can go through your entire cyber life without you knowing. Hackers typically use their power for good though and spread the idea of free Internet without censorship. They keep sites open and alive for individuals to explore and see what actually lies on the Internet. 

These things listed above are what allow hackers to keep control over what they feel is necessary. They have allowed for freedom on the Internet, released information that is needed to be seen, and help keep censorship away from what they truly believe in. They are the center for change on the internet by exploiting weaknesses and the only way to get rid of hacking and security breaches through the internet, are to have them pointed out to us so that we can see what the issue is a fix it. These hackers could have already taken whatever they wanted to make sure that they would live a healthy life with no need to ever work, but they choose to put in the hours to teach individuals about issues that need to be addressed and to stop dictatorships from controlling the freedom everyone deserves. Hackers and hacktivism is the future and all most of them want to do is help create a free and better life especially on the Internet.

Sources

Anon. 2013. “TSG IntelBrief: Syrian Electronic Army: Hacktivists On the Battlefield.” Retrieved January 21, 2016 (http://soufangroup.com/tsg-intelbrief-syrian-electronic-army-hacktivists-on-the-battlefield/).

Elazari, Keren. 2014. “Hackers: The Internet's Immune System.” Keren Elazari:Hackers: the Internet's immune system. Retrieved January 21, 2016 (https://www.ted.com/talks/keren_elazari_hackers_the_internet_s_immune_system?language=en).

Coleman, Gabriella. 2011. Hacker Politics And Publics. No. 3. Public Culture. 

Coleman, Gabriella. 2013. “Geeks Are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties.” MIT Technology Review. Retrieved January 21, 2016 (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510641/geeks-are-the-new-guardians-of-our-civil-liberties/).

Katerji, Oz. n.d. “The Syrian Electronic Army Talks About Hacking The 'Guardian' and Their Obama Bomb Hoax.” Retrieved January 21, 2016 (http://www.vice.com/read/the-syrian-electronic-army-almost-crashed-the-dow-jones). 

Anon. n.d. “Syrian Electronic Army | Akamai.” Syrian Electronic Army | Akamai. Retrieved January 21, 2016 (https://www.akamai.com/us/en/resources/syrian-electronic-army.jsp). 

Anon. n.d. “Syrian Electronic Army.” Wikipedia. Retrieved January 21, 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/syrian_electronic_army).

Winkler, Ira. 2014. “Syrian Electronic Army: Their Methods And Your Responses.” YouTube. Retrieved January 21, 2016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg3tybm7jqm). 

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