Social network accounts and official blog of Microsoft's web-based calling service Skype have been hacked by Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) which has accused the company of extending its help to government in spying over its users.
"Don't use Microsoft emails (hotmail,outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments," SEA posted on the official Skype blog as well as official Twitter account of Skype, after hacking into them. The group also retweeted a similar message originally posted on the SEA's Twitter account.
For who missed it. #SEA pic.twitter.com/9xG4N8kedi
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) January 1, 2014
The breach was identified first by The Next Web and later confirmed by Microsoft. "You may have noticed our social media properties were targeted today. No user info was compromised. We're sorry for the inconvenience," tweeted Skype after fixing up the problem.
You may have noticed our social media properties were targeted today. No user info was compromised. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. — Skype (@Skype) January 2, 2014
The Skype service itself appeared unaffected by the hack.
Last year, it was revealed that NSA could be making Skype as its easy target for eavesdropping on users' video calls. Following the allegations, Microsoft vehemently decried the snooping and promised to use 2,048-bit encryption and other advanced techniques like Perfect Forward Secrecy, and joined the league of other Silicon Valley giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.
However, it is not the first time that SEA has taken the credit for hacking. In the past, SEA has targeted the publication sites like New York Times, Thompson Reuters, BBC, The Onion and The Financial Times. Last year in July, SEA also hacked into the database of Israel-based popular messaging application Viber, accusing it of spying.
