A U.S. court has imposed a sentence of three and a half years in prison on a Syrian citizen for his involvement in a cyberattack campaign carried out on behalf of Bashar al Assad's former regime. The attacks were directed against media outlets, official bodies —among them the Israel Army— and various non-governmental organizations.
The convicted man, identified as Ahmad Umar Agha and known by the alias 'Th3Pr0', has been considered responsible for his "central role" in hacking operations coordinated by the Syrian Intelligence services between 2011 and 2024. During that period, he participated in computer intrusions against more than 45 media outlets, companies, NGOs and bodies of the United States and of countries allied with Washington.
The Deputy Attorney General for National Security, John Eisenberg, has emphasized that "Agha put his computer skills at the service of the Al Assad regime to silence information about the atrocities committed by said regime, intimidate his opponents and incite members of the armed forces of the United States to disobey their orders".
According to Eisenberg, "His attacks against our networks and institutions, including one that caused the temporary disappearance of 136,000 million dollars belonging to U.S. investors, constitute an attack on press freedom and on our national and economic security".
The Department of Justice has indicated in a statement that the sentence against Agha "must serve as a reminder that the National Security Division has a very good memory when it comes to pursuing hackers who act under the sponsorship of a State, as is the case of Agha".
Among the actions attributed to the accused is an attack against "a very respected news agency" that spread on social networks, in April 2013, a false message in which it was asserted that the then president, Barack Obama, had been injured by two explosions in the White House.
The U.S. authorities also link him to a hack of a Marine Corps recruiting page and to two attempts to compromise the official White House account on social networks, through the theft of access credentials from Presidential staff.
Agha, a member of the group 'Syrian Electronic Army' —which backed the authorities led by Al Assad with its cyberattacks after the outbreak of the civil war in 2011—, is likewise known for having accessed the social media account of a spokesperson for the Israeli Army, from which he spread a false statement about a nuclear leak at the Dimona plant.