“American soldiers, we are coming, watch your back!” read one tweet. The slides appear to outline possible scenariosįor conflicts with North Korea and China. One of the documents seems to show slides developed by theMIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, aįederally funded research and development centre focused on technologyĪnd national security. Other messages from the “CyberCaliphate” implied that the hackers had captured military secrets, but the documents which were disseminated contained widely available and non-official information. The Twitter avatar used by the command was replaced with an image of a masked militant and the legends “CyberCaliphate” and “I love you Isis.” Tweets included pictures showing US personnel with a goat in a command outpost, suggesting Isis sympathizers had somehow infiltrated military installations.Ĭompounding the embarrassment for the military was the timing of the hack, which occurred as Barack Obama gave a speech in Washington urging greater identity security for online shoppers, the first in a week of presidential speeches touching on cybersecurity. Its Facebook account appeared unaffected.
Nearly simultaneously, Central Command’s YouTube channel hosted two pro-Isis videos.
In an act of cyber vandalism that appeared more embarrassing than destructive, the Twitter and YouTube accounts for US military forces in the Middle East and South Asia were hacked by supporters of Islamic State militants on the account used by the US Central Command, tweeted out messages threatening attacks on US military personnel and expressing sympathy for Isis.