USA offers $100,000 bounty for alleged Syrian Electronic Army members

USA offers $100,000 bounty for alleged Syrian

Electronic Army members

The US Department of Justice believes it has identified three members of the notorious Syrian Electronic Army, who
have in recent years made a name for themselves with their high profile hacks against media organisations,
targeted spear-phishing attacks, and redirecting well-known websites to display propaganda in support of the Syrian
Government and President Bashar al-Assad.

In a press release, the US government has announced that it is offering a $100,000 reward for information which
leads to the arrest of two of the individuals, who are believed to be based in Syria.

According to the department of justice, 22-year-old Ahmad Umar Agha, who goes by the online handle of The Pro,
and Firas Dardar, 27, also known as The Shadow, began their activities in the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) in
approximately 2011.

In most cases, the SEAs activities were not that sophisticated stealing usernames and passwords through simple
phishing attacks, and then using those credentials to hack into email systems, social media accounts, and domain
registrars to redirect websites.

According to the US Department of Justice, the group repeatedly targeted the computers and employees of the
Executive Office of the President, but never successfully compromised systems there perhaps because they used
less than convincing email addresses such as whitehouse-online@hotmail.com.

Thats not to say that the pro-Assad hackers were not successful on many other occasions, however.

Their many past victims included Reuters (whose readers were redirected to a webpage under the SEAs control,
after the group poisoned ads provided by third-party service Taboola), the Washington Post (on more than one
occasion) and even Facebook on Mark Zuckerbergs birthday.

USA offers $100,000 bounty for alleged Syrian Electronic Army members

But perhaps one of the groups most incendiary attacks came on 23 April 2013, when the Syrian Electronic Army

Breaking: Two explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured

It wasnt true, of course, but that didnt stop the Dow Jones Industrial average temporarily plummeting, and wiping a
staggering $136 billion off the stock market.

Fortunately, in just a few minutes, people realised that the news alert was bogus and the stock market recovered.
But its one of the clearest examples ever of how even a simple phishing attack against a trusted source of

information can result in mayhem.

It is little wonder then that the FBI added the Syrian Electronic Army to its wanted list, and experts in the computer

USA offers $100,000 bounty for alleged Syrian Electronic Army members

security industry began to show an interest in unmasking their true identities.

What I found particularly interesting is how the American authorities appear to have identified Agha and his cronies.

The FBI raised search warrants for two Gmail accounts used by the group th3pr0123@gmail.com and
seatheshadow@gmail.com as well as social media accounts such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Foolishly, but fortunately for the authorities, on April 28 2013 an email was sent from the th3pr0123 Gmail account

containing images of ID documents. The name on the document was Ahmad Umar Agha and it helpfully had his
photograph on it too.

A few weeks before he had used the same account to send images of himself at a wedding.

Additionally, on a number of occasions it appears that messages were sent by alleged members of the Syrian
Electronic Army without taking proper precautions to keep their IP address private.

Further digging by the authorities uncovered similar emails sent by The Shadow, including ID documents and
images of Firas Dardar, amongst other pieces of evidence that pointedt the finger of suspicion towards the alleged
hackers.

A third alleged member of the Syrian Electronic Army, 36-year-old Peter Romar, has been charged with more
hacking offences alongside Dardar, alongside accusations that he was involved in wire fraud, and extorting money
from hacking victims.

It seems that hackers are just as capable of making mistakes regarding maintaining their privacy online as the rest

of us. Perhaps there is a lesson for those of us who are law-abiding to learn from the mistakes made by others.

Of course, whether US law enforcement will ever be able to collar the suspected members of the Syrian Electronic

Army is another matter entirely Its hardly likely at the moment that Syria is going to feel comfortable allowing
American agents to grab the alleged hackers.

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