WASHINGTON – The U.S. Army's official website was hit Monday by hackers claiming to be with a group known as the Syrian Electronic Army, Fox News has learned.
The site, which was down Monday afternoon, is a declassified public website.
Various screenshots that appeared on Twitter reportedly showed pro-Assad propaganda on the site before it crashed.
"Today an element of the Army.mil service provider's content was compromised," Army Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost said in a statement. "After this came to our attention, the Army took appropriate preventive measures to ensure there was no breach of Army data by taking down the website temporarily."
The SEA is a hacker group that has claimed in the past to disrupt major news websites, including the New York Times, CBS News, the Washington Post and the BBC.
The SEA website launched its website in May 2011 stating the group’s mission: to attack the enemies of the Syrian government, mainly those who “fabricated” stories about the Syrian civil war. They wrote that they were not officially affiliated with the government but were a group of Syrian youths.
In April 2013, the SEA successfully hacked the AP’s Twitter page, sending out a false message that there had been two explosions at the White House and that President Obama had been injured.
Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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