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Armchair cyber-army vandalizes Uncle Sam's Army.mil website

While world ogles Apple, e-graffiti daubed on domains

The elusive hacking group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has claimed it is behind the defacement of US military websites on Monday.

Among the messages injected into the US Army homepage was one stating, "Your commanders admit they are training the people they have sent you to die fighting."

True to form, the SEA boasted about the defacement on its official Twitter feed and posted links to media coverage of the incident.

It's not clear how organized the SEA might actually be. But it has claimed responsibility for a variety of similar attacks in the past, including defacements, data breaches, and compromising social media accounts belonging to US President Barack Obama.

Past targets include multiple media outlets, including Forbes, the Independent, the Telegraph, Time Out, and the al-Jazeera news service.

The group, which claims to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, rose to prominence in 2011 in the wake of anti-Assad uprisings in the state.

It has described itself as "a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria," but little more is known about it, including whether it has any direct ties to the Syrian government.

As we push the big, red "Publish" button on Monday, the primary US Army website is unavailable, and the homepage for US Strategic Command, which helps to coordinate the US military's space operations and missile defense, was down for much of the day.

The US Army has not responded to a request for comment. ®

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