Three BBC Twitter accounts have been hijacked by the ‘Syrian Electronic Army’

Update 1: It seems that the BBC Arabic Online and BBC Radio Ulster Twitter accounts were also hacked, though the latter of these seems to have now been brought back under the control of the BBC. The fact that these three specific account have been compromised suggests that they either had a shared password, or the same email address for password resets.

Update 2: It seems all three Twitter accounts are now back under the control of the BBC.

First it was Burger King, then it was Jeep and the AFP, now the BBC is the latest Twitter hack victim in recent weeks.

BBC Weather started tweeting some pretty odd and uncharacteristic messages around 1pm GMT today, coming from the ‘Syrian Electronic Army’:

Syrian Electronic Army Was Here via @official_sea #SEA #Syria

— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

This has since been followed up by another seven messages, some of which are clearly politically and racially motivated.

Although the rogue tweets are still coming, Chris Hamilton, a Social Media Editor for BBC News, has said they’re working on remedying the situation. Though it will likely require Twitter to intervene and suspend the account before the BBC can gain access to it again, similar to what happened with Burger King last month.