Syrian Electronic Army hacks Washington Post, CNN and Time websites

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) reportedly hacked the websites of news services which include the Washington Post, CNN and Time magazine.

The 'hacktivists', as they call themselves, are the supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who manipulated the links that appeared on the media groups' own webpages, the BBC reports.

According to the report, the breach was the result of a security failure at a firm which provides a link recommendation service that all three sites used.

CNN said that the security of a vendor plug-in that appeared on CNNi.com was briefly compromised and were quickly disabled adding that neither CNN.com nor CNNi.com were penetrated directly.

The Washington Post's managing editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz later said that this was not the only attack by SEA on their website as a few days ago, the hackers allegedly subjected Post newsroom employees to a sophisticated phishing attack to gain password information.

The SEA in their tweet, claimed responsibility for the attacks on Time's business partners Outbrain which was restored after almost seven hours.

Senior security advisor at Sophos, Chester Wisniewski said that such breaches are the kind of technique that hackers use to distribute malware and could also be used to install viruses or copy cookies to try and later impersonate a visitor.

The report said that earlier this week, the SEA also hit the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the New York Post.