(Image source from: Hacker's army hits Twitter)

The website of New York Times was down for a few hours on Tuesday due to the spoilsport efforts of a group of miscreants who called themselves the 'Syrian Electronic Army'. Even Twitter and the Huffington Post had issues due to these trouble makers.

This marks as the second major disruption for the New York Times in August, laying open a can of worms on web vulnerability.

People in the US could not access the sites due to an external attack on the sites' domain name registrar, reported Firstpost. The Cyber attack is believed to be a strike against the Obama administration as it may attack Syria after news of alleged chemical attacks on citizens by  President Bashar Assad’s government.

The Syrian Electronic Army had warned on Twitter that the “media is going down' before actually bringing down the sites. The attack was confirmed by Twitter officials. Australian company Melbourne IT was hit, as it is the company that registered the domain names.

Melbourne IT Chief Executive Theo Hnarakis told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio that the hackers entered through the front door using a valid user name and password. The culprits “put some information on there that brought those websites down and we’re currently investigating,” Theo added.

More such attacks are expected, with cyber security experts advising that  websites must be careful about the codes used on the site.

AW: Sruthi