Syrian Electronic Army

Syrian Electronic Army

Syrian Electronic Army logo
Formation	15 March 2011
Website	sea.sy

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is a group of computer hackers which first surfaced online in 2011 to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Using spamming, website defacement, malware, phishing, and denial-of-service attacks, it has targeted political opposition groups, western news organizations, human rights groups and websites that are seemingly neutral to the Syrian conflict. It has also hacked government websites in the Middle East and Europe, as well as US defense contractors. As of 2011^[update] the SEA has been "the first Arab country to have a public Internet Army hosted on its national networks to openly launch cyber attacks on its enemies".

The precise nature of SEA's relationship with the Syrian government has changed over time and is unclear.

In the 1990s Syrian President Bashar al-Assad headed the Syrian Computer Society, which is connected to the SEA, according to research by University of Toronto and University of Cambridge, UK. There is evidence that a Syrian Malware Team goes as far back as January 1, 2011. In February 2011, after years of internet censorship, Syrian censors lifted a ban on Facebook and YouTube. In April 2011, only days after anti-regime protests escalated in Syria, Syrian Electronic Army emerged on Facebook. On May 5, 2011 the Syrian Computer Society registered SEA’s website (syrian-es.com). Because Syria's domain registration authority registered the hacker site, some security experts have written that the group was supervised by the Syrian state. SEA claimed on its webpage to be no official entity, but "a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria". As soon as May 27, 2011 SEA had removed text that denied it was an official entity. One commentator has noted that "[SEA] volunteers might include Syrian diaspora; some of their hacks have used colloquial English and reddit memes.