The Syrian Electronic Army claims responsibility for the attacks on Twitter. | POLITICO Screen grab Obama social media links hacked

The nonprofit responsible for maintaining President Barack Obama’s online presence confirmed Monday that a social media account was hacked.

An official with Organizing for Action confirmed that the group’s link shortening account was briefly compromised by hackers.


The Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-Bashar Assad group, claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter.

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As a result of the security breach, the verified Barack Obama Twitter and Facebook pages began linking to an online video containing propaganda about the Syrian civil war.

Links containing a shortened ofa.bo address directed to a lengthy YouTube video about the ongoing conflict in Syria between forces loyal to Assad and resistance groups.

Only the linking service was compromised. The Facebook and Twitter accounts remained unaffected by the attack.

The Syrian Electronic Army also posted screen shots of a Gmail account that they say belongs to an OFA staffer using a barackobama.com address.

That staffer, Suzanne Snurpus, first confirmed to the website Quartz that her information had been hacked. A Twitter account bearing her name was later made private. Snurpus did not respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.

The SEA pointed to the National Security Agency spying scandal as justification for the privacy breaches.

The group “accessed many Obama campaign emails accounts to assess his terrorism capabilities. They are quite high,” the SEA said in a statement on Twitter.

“Obama doesn’t have any ethical issues with spying on the world, so we took it upon ourselves to return the favor,” the hacking group wrote.

The nonprofit OFA and the Democratic National Committee — which answers questions on behalf of the Obama campaign — would not comment on the SEA’s allegations was in possession of staff emails.

The White House also declined to comment.