Screenshot from the Reuters website (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/03/us-reuters-syria-hacking-idINBRE8721B420120803)
Several Reuters blog posts claimed that the Free Syrian Army was withdrawing from major cities and acquiring chemicals weapons from Libya. The news agency now says the posts were fake, as their blogging platform had been hacked.
The company suspended blogging on Friday, and no new posts have been made since.
"Reuters.com was a target of a hack on Friday," Thomson Reuters, the news agency's parent company, said in a statement. "Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists."
The bogus posts have now been removed, though their cached versions are still available online.
One fake post alleged that Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Riad al-Asaad told Reuters in a telephone interview that "the Syrian Free Army (sic) will withdraw from all Syrian cities." Al-Asaad purportedly said that the regular army had killed 1,000 rebel soldiers, and that the heavy losses, coupled with internal wrangling "for money and positions," as well as betrayals, were forcing the rebels to leave Aleppo and other major cities, and head to Turkey. There they would "re-coordinate" at secret bases set up "under the supervision of the Turkish government and the Israeli intelligence service."
The rebel commander's fake statement also contained allegations that Qatar and Saudi Arabia betrayed the Syrian opposition and "made a secret deal with Damascus" in exchange for "investments" and "privileges" in post-conflict Syria.
The phony blog post was said to have been written by Jeffrey Goldfard, who, according to his profile "writes about investment banking and the financial sector."
Comment: Whenever such attacks occur, the first thing we should ask ourselves is 'who benefits?'. Also keeping in mind the track-record of those involved in the incident.
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