Anonymous has revealed how they cracked the Syrian president's email account — his password was 12345.
President Bashar al-Assad has become the internet hacker group's latest target due to his regime's bloody crackdown on anti-government forces.
The hackers, some of whom are based in Israel, said they used simple methods to crack the email server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs on Sunday, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reports.
Anonymous posted online account details for 78 staff members and revealed that 33 of the accounts used two of the world's least secure passwords — 12345 and 123456.
Several email exchanges were also posted online, including one between Syria's UN press attaché Sheherazad Jaafari and president al-Assad's media advisor Bouthaina Shaaban, discussing tactics ahead of an interview with US television personality Barbara Walters.
"It is hugely important and worth mentioning that 'mistakes' have been done in the beginning of the crises because we did not have a well-organized 'police force'," Jaafari wrote 10 days before the December interview.
"American psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are 'mistakes' done and now we are 'fixing it'."
In the interview, al-Assad denied to Walters that his government had killed its own citizens. "We don't kill our people," he said.
Al-Assad's forces stand accused of killing thousands of civilians since the uprising began 11 months ago.
Yesterday Syria's top diplomat in Australia was summoned to the parliamentary office of Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who said al-Assad had lost its legitimacy when it started using arms against its own people and the time had come for him to step down.
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