US Centcom's social media hacked by Islamic State supporters

The social media accounts of the US military's Central Command were temporarily shut down yesterday after being hacked by a group claiming to support Islamic State.

The hackers posted threatening messages and propaganda messages, as well as military documents, some of which included contact information for senior personnel.

"American soldiers, we are coming, watch your back," said one messages on Centcom's Twitter feed.

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In a statement, Centcom confirmed that its Twitter and YouTube accounts had been "compromised" and taken offline while the incident was investigated.

However, it said that no classified information had been posted, that Centcom's operation military networks were not compromised and that there had been no operational impact.

"We are viewing this purely as a case of cybervandalism," it added.

The first rogue tweet was posted at around 12.30pm on Monday. The account's background and profile picture were also changed to show an image of an apparent militant with the phrases "CyberCaliphate" and "i love you isis".

It appeared that Centcom's Facebook pages were unaffected.

"Virtually all of the documents posted appear to already have been publicly available online, but the incident is nevertheless embarrassing to the US military," says the Washington Post.

Worse still, it came as President Barack Obama was giving a speech on cyber-security, says the BBC.

The US and Islamic State have been waging a propaganda battle online, with Centcom frequently posting videos of its military campaign in Iraq and Syria on its Twitter account. It is not clear whether hackers were real Islamic State militants, sympathisers or simply pranksters.

"Let's remember this is a social media account," Peter Singer, a strategist and analyst with the New American Foundation in Washington, told the Washington Post. "This is not a military command and control network. This is not a network that moves classified or even non-classified internal information back and forth. Essentially what they did is for several minutes take control of the megaphone."