Photo by Dan Macy

Photo by Dan Macy

The Washington Post’s website was hacked today, the paper says, by “a hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” Cue the Bezos jokes.

An editor’s note was posted at 11:16 a.m. by social media producer T.J. Ortenzi.

The Washington Post Web site was hacked today, with readers on certain stories being redirected to the site of the Syrian Electronic Army. The group is a hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Post is working to resolve the issue.

The announcement comes one day after the website of the New York Times went offline for a few hours. The Times says that was not the result of a cyberattack, but rather regular maintenance.

The Syrian Electronic Army claimed credit earlier this week for hacking the New York Post’s Facebook and Twitter feeds.

DCist reached out to Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti and will update this post as more information becomes available. Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti says there’s no additional information to share at at the moment.

Update: Post managing editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz released the following statement: “A few days ago, Post newsroom employees were subjected to a sophisticated phishing attack, allegedly by the Syrian Electronic Army, which attempted to gain password information. The attack resulted in one staff writers’ personal account being used to send out a Syrian Electronic Army message. This morning, some articles on our web site were re-directed to the Syrian Electronic Army’s site for a period of about 30 minutes. The Syrian Electronic Army, in a Tweet, claimed they gained access to elements of our site by hacking one of our business partners, Outbrain. We have taken defensive measures and removed the offending module. At this time, we believe there are no other issues affecting the site.”

Second update: Post blog The Switch has an explainer up about how the Syrian Electronic Army’s hack worked.

Filed Under: hacked, hackers, syria, syrian electronic army, washington post,