A prolific hacker with the Syrian Electronic Army was sentenced to more than three years in prison for carrying out cyber campaigns against nearly 50 Western targets, the Justice Department announced this week.
Ahmad Umar Agha, known online as “Th3Pr0,” was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Virginia to 42 months behind bars for his role in a conspiracy that was organized by former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's closest advisers.
The hacking group has been involved since at least 2011 in computer intrusions in support of Assad, whose government was eventually overthrown by a rebel coalition in 2024 after a protracted civil war.
In one notable 2013 incident, the group said it hijacked the Associated Press’s Twitter account and sent out a tweet that falsely reported an explosion at the White House had injured President Barack Obama. The hoax caused a brief $136 billion dip in the stock market.
A 2014 FBI affidavit said that Twitter's message confirming a password reset for the account was sent to an email address used by Agha.
In another attack, Agha gained access to a company hosting the Marine Corps’ recruiting website and redirected visitors to a propaganda message that urged service members to disobey orders and join the Syrian Army.
The U.S. first charged Agha for his criminal activities in 2014. In 2016, the FBI added him and another member of the Syrian Electronic Army, Firas Dardar, to its Cyber's Most Wanted list with a $100,000 reward.
Both men were indicted by a federal grand jury in 2018. Agha was taken into U.S. custody last year, however the DOJ has not given details of his arrest. Dardar remains a fugitive.
All together, Agha hacked about 47 Western media outlets, non-profit groups and other entities allied with the U.S., according to the DOJ.
The department also said the group’s digital conspiracy collected intelligence for Assad’s government before its fall.
"Agha deployed his hacking skills in the service of Assad's regime to silence reporting on the regime's atrocities, intimidate its opponents, and incite U.S. servicemembers to refuse their orders," John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
Martin Matishak
is the senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. Prior to joining Recorded Future News in 2021, he spent more than five years at Politico, where he covered digital and national security developments across Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community. He previously was a reporter at The Hill, National Journal Group and Inside Washington Publishers.