US Army website hit by hackers, Syrian Electronic Army claims responsibility

File photo - U.S. soldiers participate in Exercise Eager Lion at the Jordan-Saudi Arabia border, south of Amman May 18, 2015. (REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed)

Just hours after President Obama stated that cyberattacks against American interests were certain to increase, the official website of the U.S. Army was targeted by hackers.

A group claiming to be the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) claimed responsibility for the action, which saw a number of anti-U.S. messages posted on the site. One said: "Your commanders admit they are training the people they have sent you to die fighting."

SEA is known for its support of Bashar al-Assad, Syria's embattled president.

Responding to the hack, U.S. Army spokesperson Brigadier General Malcolm Frost said: "Today an element of the army.mil service provider's content was compromised."

He continued, "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 website remained offline for part of Monday afternoon, though is back up now. The site is not thought to hold any confidential information, acting instead as an information resource for interested visitors.

SEA has claimed responsibility for a number of cyberattacks in recent years, among them a Thanksgiving breach in 2014 that affected a large number of high-profile sites, and another a year earlier that disrupted the New York Times website.

Speaking at the international G7 summit in Germany this week, Obama said the problem of cyberattacks against U.S. interests "is not going to go away, it's going to accelerate."

His comments came a week after a major security breach that saw hackers nab personal data belonging to some four million U.S. government employees.

Officials have indicated that Chinese hackers may have been behind the attack, though the country has denied involvement.