According to the latest alert issued by Cybersecurity Firm CrowdStrike, hackers being funded by Turkish government are said to be breaking into the social media accounts of many US journalists in order to sneak into their minds on the current political situation in the United States.
As US Journalists use their respective social media accounts to voice-in their opinion on various issues prevailing in the United States, Turkish hackers are showing a lot of interest in tapping those who have a negative opinion on the Trump administration.
Perhaps the aim is to hijack their minds and use them against Trump election campaign for the upcoming midterm elections scheduled to be held in November this year.
Some of the hackers have also managed to take over the social media accounts of few of the top-notch US Journalists to praise Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The photos of the compromised accounts were shared by Crowdstrike with CNBC which ran a news post on this weekend.
The hacking group behind these attacks is identified as Ayyildiz Tim- a group of hackers who are being funded by Erdogan’s security forces.
Elizabeth MacDonald from Fox news, Tom Keene from Bloomberg, and Vanessa Friedman from the Times were the victims of the recent cyber attack conducted by the Turkish hacking group.
Security researchers from CrowdStrike claim that the accounts can also be later used by hackers to launch phishing attacks on those who are connected or following the journalists. Around 67 of them were identified as victims of the cyber attack by the California based firm.
13 of the spoofed media accounts replicating BBC and other media outlets such as APT Online were also created by the group. But Twitter and Facebook managed to pull them down on time.
IT experts from Times have confirmed the news reported by CrowdStrike and issued a statement that they have succeeded in locking down and securing the account of Freidman.
