After pro-Syrian government messages were posted on a blog run by Amnesty International, the human rights organization called the posts fake and blamed hackers for the messages that were decidedly off-message.
With the atrociously written headline, "Amnesty Calls on UN to stop the US, Qatar and Turkey funding and arming Syria Rebels," hackers altered the blog to give the appearance that Amnesty was siding with the government in the armed conflict.
Amnesty said the Monday (Aug. 27) attack on their WordPress-based blog amounted to a pro-Syrian government campaign that accused rebels of committing "crimes against humanity" and "abuse" against those who did not “comply with their desire to overthrow the sovereign government for the installation of an Islamic caliphate.”
In reality, Amnesty International regularly publishes blog posts and fact-based articles that highlight the Syrian government's human rights abuses and the human cost of the ongoing Syrian conflict.
According to the Washington Post, one of the fake posts blamed rebels for the massacre of 108 people, which contradicted Amnesty's previous position that the government was responsible.
According to the Post, Amnesty IT staff would delete bogus posts only to have them reappear later on. Despite the security breach, Amnesty said the outward facing website was a platform for sharing news and telling stories, not a place where sensitive information is stored.
Amnesty told the Post that links to fake posts on social-media sites alerted them to the security breach.
Spokesman Sanjeev Bery told the Post that because of the civil rights group's strong anti-government stance on the Syrian conflict, an attack from inside the government is a possibility.
“Given that we’ve been so forthright in criticizing the Syrian government for its crimes against humanity, that could conceivably make us the target of some kind of campaign,” he said.