A Syrian man tied to the Syrian Digital Military (SEA) has obtained a 42-month jail sentence within the US, greater than 12 years after he was first charged.
Ahmad Umar Agha, who used the net deal with Th3Pr0, was sentenced on Thursday by a federal courtroom within the Jap District of Virginia. In keeping with the Justice Division, he evaded US authorities for greater than a decade.
Prosecutors say the hacking conspiracy Agha took half in was directed by figures near Bashar al-Assad, amongst them the pinnacle of Syria’s Common Intelligence Directorate. The scheme started as early as August 2011 and continued till January 2024.
The DOJ described Agha as a central determine within the operation. He compromised round 47 targets, a mixture of Western information shops, corporations, NGOs, and authorities our bodies within the US and allied nations.
Among the many intrusions highlighted by prosecutors was the 2013 takeover of the Related Press’s Twitter account. Agha used it to publish a fabricated report claiming that President Barack Obama had been damage in two blasts on the White Home. The faux put up triggered a flash crash that briefly wiped $136 billion off the mixed worth of the Dow Jones Industrial Common’s part shares.
Agha additionally gained entry to the corporate internet hosting the Marine Corps’ recruiting web site and despatched its visitors to a picture calling on Marines to defy their orders.
He twice went after the White Home’s social media presence by concentrating on the e-mail credentials of White Home staff. In a single case he obtained them, however his try to make use of that entry to dupe different staffers into handing over the accounts didn’t work.
The intrusions left many victims with giant payments for cleanup and safety overhauls. A agency offering on-line publishers with content material, promoting, and outbound hyperlinks misplaced round $35,000 per day for about six months. A worldwide NGO spent roughly $250,000 on new community monitoring instruments, retrained greater than 800 staff, and upgraded its safety, with whole losses of $480,000.
Agha and his alleged confederate, Firas Dardar, have been first charged by prison criticism in June 2014. The case was unsealed in March 2016, when the FBI put each males on its Cyber’s Most Wished checklist and supplied a reward of as much as $100,000 for info resulting in Agha’s arrest.
A grand jury indicted the pair in Might 2018. Dardar has but to be caught.
Agha’s look in a federal courtroom in November 2025 was first reported by authorized information outlet Courtroom Watch. The DOJ’s announcement doesn’t clarify how or the place he was taken into custody.
Associated: Bulletproof Host Virtualine Loses Its Area to FBI Seizure
Associated: $2 Million+ Drained From Polymarket Merchants in New Provide Chain Assault
Associated: Ukrainian Hive and Nefilim Ransomware Affiliate Will get 70 Months in US Jail
