Cyberwars: 'The Onion' runs rings round its Twitter feed hackers

The Onion's twitter feed following the supposed hack

On Monday night the Twitter feed of satirical newspaper The Onion was hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (Sea), supposed supporters of the Assad regime. Or that’s what it looked like.

There was widespread confusion when posts such as “The Syrian Electronic Army Was Here” and “UN Retracts Report Of Syrian Chemical Weapon Use: Lab Tests Confirm It Is Jihadi Body Odor (Sic),” went out alongside, “Seedless Watermelon Coming To Grips With Fact It’ll Never Be Able To Have Kids”.

Some assumed that it was some meta joke dreamed up by writers at Onion HQ, or at least they did until a Sea representative claimed responsibility for the sub-par tweeting to the New York Times.

Apparently the group were put-out by a spoof-column of Bashar Al-Assad entitled “Hi, in the past two years, you have allowed me to kill 70,000 people”.

Which raises the question – what’s the point of hacking a spoof news organisation?

The Onion responded in the way only they can, with a new story: “Onion Twitter Password Changed to Onionman77 – That Ought to Do It”.