The Syrian Electronic Army, a notorious hacking group, says it claimed two big-name victims Saturday: eBay and PayPal.
While a hack on PayPal could put millions of peoples' bank information at risk, the hackers said this attack was a "hacktivist operation," and that they did not target account information. Instead, the SEA claimed it was able to replace the homepages of eBay and PayPal in France, Israel and the UK with its own logo.
See also: Inside the Syrian Electronic Army Hack on CNN
"We didn't do it to hack people accounts," SEA member Th3 Pr0 told Mashable. Th3 Pr0 said the SEA compromised eBay's domains manager, which allowed the hackers to shut down the website or redirect it another server. Th3 Pr0 added that the SEA was able to display its logo on various eBay and PayPal homepages for about 30 minutes.
The ecommerce companies, which are jointly owned, haven't confirmed the attack, but the SEA has provided the following screenshots to prove that it occurred. The images appear to show control panels for eBay and PayPal in France, which are operated through MarkMonitor, an online brand-protection company.

Image: Syrian Electronic Army

Image: Syrian Electronic Army
A spokesperson for MarkMonitor told Mashable that the company "takes security very seriously", and it does not comment on clients, including whether or not a particular company is a MarkMonitor client.
The SEA has become known for high-profile attacks — mostly on western media companies — performed through phishing, or fraudulent emails used to trick the company's employees into providing sensitive login information. Although Th3 Pr0 refused to disclose exactly how the alleged attack took place, the hacker suggested that the SEA used more forceful tactics than usual.
"PayPal used a large amount of authentication and verification protocols, so the attack required a lot more advanced techniques," Th3 Pr0 said.
The SEA said the attack was in retaliation for PayPal and eBay's lack of presence in Syria. Description pages for both sites — eBay and PayPal — do not include Syria on their respective lists of countries where the services are available.
If your Paypal account is down for a few minutes, think about Syrians who were denied online payments for more than 3 years. #SEA
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) February 1, 2014
PayPal and eBay did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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