Anonymous hackers expose Syrian strongman's weak email password

Already facing pressure from world leaders to step down, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may face embarrassment from the tech community as well, after he was found to be using what is considered one of the world's 25 worst passwords: 12345.

 

Hacktivist group Anonymous exposed al-Assad's password while in the process of leaking his emails, according to a report on tech site Mashable.

 

"The string of consecutive numbers is the second-weakest password according to a 2011 study," the Mashable report said.

 

Last November, SplashData CEO Morgan Slain said that many people risk fraud and identity theft by using weak, easy-to-guess passwords.

 

Topping the supposed list are "password," "123456," "12345678," "qwerty," and "abc123."

 

Mashable cited a report from Israeli daily Haaretz that Anonymous had broken into the mail server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs.

 

The group accessed some 78 inboxes of Assad’s staffers, with the password 12345 associated with several of the accounts.

 

Mansour Fadlallah Azzam, the minister of presidential affairs and Bouthaina Shaaban, Assad’s media adviser, were among the victims of the inbox hacks.

 

The Mashable report said Haaretz obtained and published one email that included documents intended to prepare the Syrian leader for his December 2011 interview with Barbara Walters.

 

In the leaked email, Syrian spokesperson at the United Nations Sheherazad Jaafari advised Shabaan and Luna Chebel, a former Al Jazeera reporter and current Assad staffer, on what the Syrian president should say to manipulate Americans.

 

Jaafari’s email also allegedly advised that al-Assad should emphasize the openness of Facebook and YouTube to show the true situation in Syria.

 

It also supposedly suggested that press entry restrictions should be spun as a proactive measure not to have foreign journalists misrepresent the country. — TJD, GMA News