A number of BBC Twitter accounts were hacked today, including its weather, Arabic, and Radio Ulster feeds — the latest in a series of breached corporate accounts.
BBC News reported that by 1:30 p.m. Eastern, the company had regained control of all three accounts and deleted all inappropriate content, including fake weather conditions in the Middle East that appeared earlier today.
"The BBC Twitter accounts which were hacked earlier today are now back under control and all inappropriate tweets have been deleted," a BBC spokeswoman said in a statement. "We apologize to our audiences that this unacceptable material appeared under the BBC's name."
According to Faris Couri, BBC Arabic's editor-in-chief, the attack began around 11 a.m. GMT, when several pro-Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad messages were posted.
The weather feed, which boasts 60,000 followers, included messages like "Saudi weather station down due to head-on collision with camel," and "Chaotic weather forecast for Lebanon as the government decides to distance itself from the Milky Way."
A group dubbed the Syrian Electronic Army is claiming responsibility for the hack.
Sophos security consultant Graham Cluley said it is unclear how the accounts were infiltrated. Whether the owners were phished, had their password cracked, or "made the mistake of using the same password in multiple places" is a bit foggy, he wrote in a blog post.
"The good news," Cluley said, "is that the hack doesn't appear to have been done with the intention of spreading malicious links, or scams. Instead, it appears that the Syrian Electronic Army are trying to spread political messages."
At the same time as the Twitter attack, some BBC staffers received a phishing email with a link that would expose password details if clicked. There is no word on whether the two incidents are related.
Last month, the Twitter accounts of Burger King and Jeep were targeted by hackers, who defaced both accounts with McDonald's logos.
That came shortly after Twitter said that "unusual access patterns" suggested that attackers gained access to the usernames, emails, addresses, and passwords of about 250,000 users.
Twitter, meanwhile, celebrates its seventh birthday today as a global phenomenon with 200 million active users who send more than 400 million tweets every day.