What do the Seattle Seahawks and the Syrian Electronic Army have in common? Hashtags.
Last night the Seattle Seahawks, an American football team headed to the Super Bowl, appeared suddenly passionate about CNN's unfair coverage of the war in Syria.
Seahawks fans monitoring #SEA, the team's hashtag on Twitter, were surprised, and a little impressed.
The hashtag, of course, belonged to the Syrian Electronic Army, who was the actual group behind the hack. During their 10 minute spree, they posted several tweets that ended with the hashtag "SEA."
As a result the group's first few tweets were lost among Seahawks posts. The hackers seemed to realize this pretty quickly and abandoned the SEA hashtag. A few minutes later, CNN wrested back control and deleted the posts.
The Syrian Electronic Army, which supports the government of Bashar al-Assad, said the attack was in retaliation for CNN’s biased reporting on Syria. The country's bloody and ongoing conflict has so far claimed more than 130,000 lives — so many that the United Nations has stopped counting deaths — and displaced more than 6 million people.
Here's a look at all the tweets the Syrian Electronic Army managed to post on CNN's Twitter account before the media company regained control.
Thankfully the confusion ended quickly and #SEA is already back to being overwhelmed by tweets from people at the beach.
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