The Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US
military command were suspended for a few hours after being hacked by a group
claiming to back Islamic State. One
message on Centcom's Twitter feed said: "American soldiers, we are coming,
watch your back. Continue..
It was
signed by Isis, another name for the Islamic State. Some internal military
documents also appeared on the Centcom Twitter feed.
Centcom
said it was "cyber-vandalism" and not a serious data breach.
In a
statement, it said there was no operational impact and no classified
information was posted.
"We
are viewing this purely as a case of cyber-vandalism," it said. Later on
Monday, its Twitter feed became visible again, although not active.
Embarrassingly,
the hack happened as President Barack Obama was giving a speech on cyber-security.
Reflecting
on major breaches like a recent hack of Sony Pictures, Mr Obama said in his speech
the US had been reminded of "enormous vulnerabilities for us as a nation
and for our economy".
His spokesman Josh Earnest said
the US is looking into the Centcom hacking.
He said
they were investigating the extent of the incident, and that there was a
significant difference between a large data breach and the hacking of a Twitter
account.
Analysis
- Jonathan Marcus, BBC defence correspondent
This is an irritating
hack rather than a matter of major security concern, but it will inevitably
lead to a review to see if there are any morefundamental vulnerabilities
in the US military's public facing web and Twitter accounts.
The material posted on
the site represents an amateurish and unconvincing attempt to publicise
"secrets". Most of the information is hardly secret at all - the
postal address at the Pentagon of the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Martin Dempsey.
A variety of maps and
diagrams were also posted by the hackers. Two appeared to be slides from a
presentation at the Lincoln Laboratory - a government funded
think-tank at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
They showed maritime
defences on the Chinese coast, but not in any great detail. There were also
simple maps of North Korea showing population centres, nuclear installations
and missile sites.
You can find maps
showing the same things on the websites of many US think-tanks.
An unnamed Pentagon official
told Reuters the hacking was an embarrassment but did not appear to be a
security threat.
And
Professor Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey, said he did not
consider the attack to be a major breach of security.
"I
wouldn't say it's trivial, but it's just a slip," he told the BBC.
"Twitter
accounts are usually looked after by an individual in an organisation - it's
very easy to give away that password.
"In
terms of if this is a hack into something secret, or sensitive - no, it's not.
An individual has made a slight mistake."
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