'Syrian' Hackers Force NYT to Use Alternate Website

A group of hackers that claims loyalty to Syria's Bashar al-Assad seems to have hacked the New York Times, reports PCMag. The newspaper's website went down completely this afternoon, and a Times VP says a "malicious external attack" is likely to blame. Some visitors are seeing a "Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army" message. (Gawker has a screen shot.) The Times is using nytco.com as an alternate site in the interim. It's the second time this month the newspaper's site has gone down, though the Times says the first was not because of a hack.

The SEA also is claiming attacks on the domain registries of Twitter and of Huffington Post UK, though those attacks appear to be less serious. All three sites use the same domain name registrar, Melbourne IT, which could be the source of the vulnerability, reports ReadWrite.com. The SEA has claimed attacks on a slew of media sites in the past, including NPR, the Washington Post, the BBC, and Reuters. Today's come as the US considers a military strike against Syria. (More Syrian Electronic Army stories.)