(Bloomberg) — Three Syrian men have been charged with launching high-profile cyber-attacks on U.S. institutions, including one incident that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by more than 140 points.
The trio, allegedly part of a group known as the Syrian Electronic Army, are accused of hacking into computer systems operated by Harvard University and news outlets including the Associated Press and Thomson Reuters Corp. over a two-year period starting in 2011, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
The alleged hackers include Ahmad Umar Agha, 22, known online as "The Pro," and Firas Dandar, 27, who goes by the online alias "The Shadow." They took over the Associated Press's Twitter feed in 2013 and sent fake alerts that U.S. President Barack Obama had been injured in a White House bombing, according to prosecutors. The bogus dispatches caused the Dow to fall by 143 points on April 23, 2013, wiping out more than $80 billion in value.
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