Microsoft’s Xbox Support Twitter account briefly hijacked by the Syrian Electronic Army

Microsoft today briefly faced its second social media-based attack from the Syrian Electronic Army in a month. The @XboxSupport account posted a link to the SEA website, along with other messages tagging the group’s own Twitter account. However, the tweets were deleted within 45 minutes of being posted, indicating that Microsoft has regained control of the account.

The SEA tweeted a screenshot from its own account that appears to prove that it had access to the Xbox Support account, along with an image showing access to the Xbox Instagram account, although as yet the group hasn’t made use of this apparent access.

The SEA has also posted what appears to be a faked manual retweet of the Xbox Support account promoting a spoof “new game.” However, we did not see this posted to the actual Xbox Support account while the SEA had access, suggesting that it perhaps did not have time to publish the image before Microsoft regained control.

The incident follows the SEA’s hijacking of social media accounts related to Microsoft’s Skype service on January 1. At the time, the group said that its attack was in reaction to Microsoft’s supposed monitoring of user data, accusing the company of  “selling the data to the governments.”