DAMASCUS 12.19pm:
The Syrian Electronic Army, a group of web activists loyal to the Assad regime, hacked into al Jazeera’s Syria live blog and replaced coverage of protests with pro-government pictures, ars technica reports:
The relationship of the Syrian Electronic Army to the government itself is unclear. However, the group’s domain was registered in May of 2011 in Tartous, Syria, and its site is hosted on servers maintained by the Syrian Computer Society — a group Assad was the head of before assuming Syria’s presidency, and introduced the internet to Syria in 2001 …
On their own site, the Syrian Electronic Army announced the “code re-penetration” of the site by a “professional Syrian battalion” of hackers, denouncing al Jazeera for broadcasting “false and fabricated news” to “ignite sedition” among the people of Syria and achieve the goals of “Washington and Tel Aviv.
In September the group hacked Harvard University’s website and it is the second time this month it has targeted al Jazeera, according to the report.
Syrian TV has accused al Jazeera of inciting unrest in the country and even of building “cinematic replicas” of Syrian cities and squares in the Gulf state of Qatar in order to fabricate the uprising in Syria.