On Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times confirmed that its website was hacked, possibly by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a Syrian pro-government group.

In a tweet, Eileen Murphy, a Times vice president for corporate communications, wrote: “initial assessment - issue is most likely result of malicious external attack. working to fix.”

The SEA has become increasingly aggressive in recent months, targeting English-language media, including the Financial Times’ Twitter account, the Associated Press, National Public Radio, and even The Onion, which detailed the takeover on its own site in May 2013.

The Times DNS records have been altered, and now point to an Australian hosting company, Melbourne IT. In addition, Twitter’s DNS records appear to also have been altered, although Twitter’s service does not seem to be affected for the time being. Twitter did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. The SEA claimed responsibility for both hacks on Twitter—noting that it had also targeted Huffingtonpost.co.uk.

The Times remains accessible via its IP address: http://170.149.168.130/

In response, the Wall Street Journal has announced that it has dropped its paywall while the Times’ service has been disrupted.

Ars will have more coverage as this story unfolds.