Newsweek Twitter Account Hacked By Group Claiming ISIS Affiliation

Updated | At 10:45 a.m., the Newsweek Twitter account, @Newsweek, was hacked by a group calling themselves the "Cyber Caliphate." The group claimed to be affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS) and has previously hacked @Centcom, the Twitter account of the United States Central Command, as well as the official Twitter account of Taylor Swift. The Newsweek account remained hacked for 14 minutes until 10:59 a.m., when Twitter's support team regained control of the account at the publication's request.

"We can confirm that Newsweek's Twitter account was hacked this morning, and have since regained control of the account,"Newsweek managing editor Kira Bindrim said in a statement. "We apologize to our readers for anything offensive that might have been sent from our account during that period, and are working to strengthen our newsroom security measures going forward." 

During the hack, the @Newsweek account's profile picture and banner were changed to images of a masked man and the Black Standard flag, along with a message "Je su IS IS." The group tweeted out offensive messages threatening Michelle Obama and praising "cyber jihad." Images the hackers claimed were confidential were also tweeted, specifically from the Defense Cyber Investigations Training Academy and the Pentagon. 

The FBI is investigating the hack as some of the tweets sent threatened the Obama family. 

Also on Tuesday, ibtimes.com, the website of the International Business Times, was hacked by what appeared to be the same group. A subsidiary Newsweek Tumblr account, nwkarchivist.tumblr.com, was also briefly hacked. The official Twitter account of Latin Times was also hacked. Newsweek, International Business Times and Latin Times share a parent company, IBT Media.