CNN’s website and Twitter account hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

The Twitter account and website for CNN appeared to have been hacked on Thursday by individuals representing the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).

A number of suspicious tweets were posted to CNN’s 11.6 million followers that included allegations that the CIA is behind the al-Qaida network.

“Syrian Electronic Army Was Here … Stop lying … All your reports are fake!” reads one missive posted to the site.

All of the tweets purporting to have been from the pro-Assad group were deleted within 10 minutes.

The company's website also appeared to have been hacked and contained a false message that read:

"Some of the organization's social media accounts were compromised via a third-party social publishing platform," CNN spokesman Matt Dornic told Yahoo News via email. "We are working with the affected users and vendor to remedy the issue."

The SEA has successfully orchestrated more than two dozen high-profile hacking efforts going back to July 2011, including on the BBC, National Public Radio, Al-Jazeera and the Washington Post.

Though reportedly not directly affiliated with the Syrian regime, the SEA describes itself as being composed of “patriotic” young Syrians who are protesting how the Assad government has been portrayed since the onset of their country’s civil war.

The group achieved its greatest notoriety in April 2013, when it hacked the Associated Press Twitter account, announcing that the White House had been attacked and that President Obama had been injured. Though the false claim was almost immediately refuted, it still had a steep impact on the daily financial markets, causing a $136.5 billion temporary drop.

The CNN hack was the second high-profile attack from SEA this week alone. On Monday, SEA reportedly hacked the official Microsoft blog.