Embarrassment: Pentagon ‘leak’ happens same day Obama pushes for new cyber security laws

The U.S. Central Command Twitter feed appeared to have been hacked on Monday by people claiming to be Islamic State sympathizers.

“In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the CyberCaliphate continues its CyberJihad,” the Centcom Twitter feed said.

The Twitter account published a list of generals and addresses associated with them, titled “Army General Officer Public Roster (by rank) 2 January 2014.”

Subsequent posts on the Centcom twitter account read, “Pentagon Networks Hacked! China Scenarios” and “Pentagon Networks Hacked. Korean Scenarios.”

The apparent infiltration came as President Barack Obama prepared to outline new proposals to protect the country’s Internet systems from cybersecurity threats.

As of 1:10 PM Eastern Standard Time the Account has been suspended.

A Pentagon official confirmed Monday that the U.S. Central Command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts werecompromised andsuspended on Monday after apparently being hacked by Islamic State supporters.

The Twitter feed had several messages from hackers, including one telling American soldiers to “watch your back,” and the YouTube account had two videos that appeared to be linked to the Islamic State movement.

A Pentagon official said Monday the hacking of the U.S. Central Command Twitter feed was an embarrassment but did not appear to be a security threat.

Metro reached out to Adam Segal, senior fellow for China studies and director of the digital and cyberspace policy program at the Council on Foreign relations, who supported the claims from Pentagon officials.

“I would suspect that [the hack] is pretty limited, unless there are shared passwords across multiple accounts,” Segal said when asked if this hack presented a threat to other governent accounts or more sensitive information. “From what I can tell or see most of the stuff [tweeted out] is publicly available online.”

Segal went on to say that if anything this hack would be more of an embarrassment for the government and that it was unlikely we would see another Sony level attack on the United States.