US Centcom Twitter account 'hacked by Islamic State'

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: BBC

US Central Command's Twitter account appears to have been hacked by a group claiming to back Islamic State.
...
It was signed by Isis, another name for the Islamic State. Some internal military documents also appeared on the Centcom Twitter feed.

US Centcom told the BBC it was preparing a statement. The hack happened as President Barack Obama prepared a speech on cybersecurity.

Some of the documents posted appeared to list names and phone numbers of members of the military as well as PowerPoint slides and maps.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30785232

---

Not good, if someone (IS or not) really has accessed internal documents.

[Roy Rolling]

1. Not good, but...

It's a Twitter account. Security is limited to how clever you can be with passwords. Not good, but it's like miscreants hijacking a TV signal or radio frequency. It's just media, not data. (I hope)

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. It's the internal documents, if they are classified, that are worrying (nt)

[JonLP24]

16. I have a question

I had a Twitter account a long time ago but lost interest quickly & I only have a Youtube account so what would be a likely scenario where something that is classified? I don't know the kind of information they do release are not much more if at all than they would for a press release (something they want us to know).

I imagine something like this -- begging for money.

Chairman: Sequestration Cuts Would Require Strategy Change

By Amaani Lyle
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11, 2015 – Unless Congress changes the Budget Control Act, which now requires a return to sequestration-level spending cuts in 2016, the military will need to change its strategy, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an interview broadcast today.

In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace,” Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said the Army is drawing down from 570,000 soldiers to 450,000, but he noted that a Pentagon analysis shows sequestration would drive that number to 420,000, and even lower under some circumstances.

Sequestration would leave the military “far less able to do the things that we think the country needs us to do,” Dempsey said.

Meanwhile, he United States continues to face threats from both state actors and nonstate actors, the chairman said. Though he’s concerned about that, he added, the United States still is the most powerful nation in the world by any measure, and is likely to remain so – “unless we -- unless we talk ourselves out of it and legislate ourselves out of it with things like the Budget Control Act.”

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123948

[KeepItReal]

2. The Twitter hack is embarrassing, hopefully they don't have actual sensitive info from other systems

All the money America spends on alphabet agencies...

[Sunlei]

9. We know how our gov acts when they are 'embarrassed' . Remember the diplomatic cables 'hacked'?

[iandhr]

4. Maybe they can trace where the tweet came from.

[Ash_F]

5. Newflash: US military not as 'elite' as it presents itself. /nt

[TheNutcracker]

6. Gee, can we now stop counting our votes electronically??????

[James48]

7. Time to change the password

from "password" to something else.


Seriously. They ought to change it .



Just sayin'.

[nichomachus]

10. They did change it last month

It's now "12345"

[kentauros]

17. "That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!"

[Sunlei]

8. US Central Command started their own homeland security problems when they hired

private contractors with thousands of employees many with unlimited access to Americans personal stuff and USA Gov. secret files.

How many private contractor employees out there have clearance these days? access to every 'file', every record, every password in America?

[Spooky69]

12. Exactly why I think this is bullshit . . .

Job security

[Sunlei]

13. Now US Centcom will hire another 'for profit' security business to collect every tweet.....

Only a couple billion more of Americans Federal money for homeland security

[CJCRANE]

14. Cybersecurity is flavor of the month.

Perhaps they teamed up with Kim Jong-Un's hacktivists.

[Burf-_-]

11. hmmmm maybe

Perhaps something as Delicate as Centcom should not be on any kind of social media site whatsoever?

[JDPriestly]

15. This cannot have been very serious.

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.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30785232

[0rganism]

18. the question that's on my mind...

why the fuck does US Centcom need a fucking TWITTER ACCOUNT?