Last weekend, the Syrian Electronic Army again grabbed headlines with a high-profile attack on BarackObama.com. An aspect that caught our attention is how the SEA continues to adapt their methods by pursuing communications partners instead of directly compromising the target social media accounts. In this latest case, the group tampered with a URL shortener service.
Looking back at Recorded Future’s September evaluation of the Syrian Electronic Army’s attack patterns raises the question of whether a “dry run” targeting another link shortening service preceded this high profile attack.
As of today, we have no evidence of a precursor attack in open sources although it remains a case to watch.