The Syrian Electronic Army has taken credit for a number of high-profile hacks of sites and services ranging from Twitter and the New York Times to Thompson Reuters, the BBC, and the popular Viber messaging app. Microsoft has vehemently decried government snooping done outside legal channels - general counsel Brad Smith in December called it "an 'advanced persistent threat,' alongside sophisticated malware and cyberattacks" - and promises to use stronger, 2,048-bit encryption and techniques such as Perfect Forward Secrecy to protect the privacy of Internet traffic routed through its data centers. "We recently became aware of a targeted cyber attack that led to access to Skype's social media properties, but these credentials were quickly reset," a spokesperson for Skype said in an e-mail message. Skype responded later in the day to CNET's request for comment. The hacker group also posted the same message to its own Twitter account. #SEA." That post, too, was quickly deleted, but not before The Next Web got a screenshot. Over at Facebook on Wednesday, the Skype account featured a broader message from the Syrian Electronic Army about Microsoft's communications services: "Don't use Microsoft emails (hotmail,outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling it to the governments. Leaked slides from the US National Security Agency reportedly have revealed that Skype has installed a "back door" that enables monitoring by governments of Skype video and audio calls, and officials in Luxembourg, where Skype is based, are said to be investigating whether Skype has shared information on its Luxembourgian users with the NSA.Ĭharges of back doors and cooperation with government spying efforts have also been leveled at Microsoft as a whole, along with other Internet heavyweights including Yahoo, Facebook, and Apple. Like other widely used Internet communications services, Microsoft-owned Skype has been swept up in the surveillance controversy unleashed in mid-2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Without warrants, intelligence agency buys location data on US residents.SolarWinds hackers reportedly breached high-level DHS email accounts.Apple's worldwide national security report shows drop in data requests as pandemic spread.Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou enters agreement with Justice Department.US cuts off Pegasus developer: What you need to know about this spyware.
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