{"id":246248,"date":"2026-10-31T03:27:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/syrian-hacker-behind-fake-tweet-that-triggered-136-billion-market-drop-gets-42-months-in-prison"},"modified":"2026-10-31T03:27:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:27:20","slug":"syrian-hacker-behind-fake-tweet-that-triggered-136-billion-market-drop-gets-42-months-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/syrian-hacker-behind-fake-tweet-that-triggered-136-billion-market-drop-gets-42-months-in-prison","title":{"rendered":"Syrian Hacker Behind Fake Tweet That Triggered $136 Billion Market Drop Gets 42 Months in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><b>Ahmad Umar Agha<\/b>, a Syrian Electronic Army hacker known online as \u201c<strong>Th3Pr0<\/strong>,\u201d has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/syrian-man-sentenced-wide-ranging-hacking-conspiracy-conducted-behalf-bashar-al-assad-regime\" target=\"_blank\">sentenced by a U.S. federal court<\/a> to 42 months in prison for his role in a hacking conspiracy that targeted Western news outlets.<\/p>\n<p>The conspiracy was organized and led by members of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s inner circle, including the commander of Syria\u2019s General Intelligence Directorate, the U.S. Justice Department said on October 29.<\/p>\n<p>The pro-Assad <b>Syrian Electronic Army <\/b>began its attacks in 2011. Its members sent phishing emails to steal employees\u2019 passwords, then used those passwords to deface websites, redirect web traffic, and hijack social media accounts, according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/media\/824401\/dl?inline\" target=\"_blank\">2014 FBI affidavit<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ahmad Umar Agha, a Syrian Electronic Army hacker known online as \u201cTh3Pr0,\u201d has been sentenced by a U.S. federal court to 42 months in prison for his role in a hacking conspiracy that targeted Western news outlets. The conspiracy was organized and led by members of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s inner circle, including the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,1493],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode","category-law-enforcement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}