The New York Times is still feeling the effects of a Tuesday afternoon attack on its Web site. The hack was claimed by a group known as the Syrian Electronic Army, which also asserted responsibility for a similar attack on social networking site Twitter.

Tuesday’s intrusions were the most sophisticated in a series of attacks on high-profile Western media organizations, including The Washington Post and the Associated Press. The hackers use the attacks to broadcast their support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, although the group has never been found to have any official ties to his regime.

Little is known about the group, which appears to made up of mostly younger people. To date, no person has ever been arrested for being a member.

Neither Twitter nor the Times has confirmed that the attacks were the result of efforts by the SEA, although there is evidence suggesting the group was behind both.

The attackers were able to disrupt the Web sites owned by the Times and Twitter by accessing the records of an Australian firm, Melbourne IT, which registers domain names, such as nytimes.com, and stores directory records for those Web sites. The hackers then altered the information on these records, which allowed them to prevent users from seeing the Times’ s Web site.

Source: Washington Post