NHL.com among long list of websites briefly taken off-line by hackers

Visitors to NHL.com early Thursday morning were impacted by a hack, global in scale, that purportedly came from the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA). 

The hack took NHL.com temporarily offline, and users attempting to access the site were instead routed to the following notification:

It would seem the SEA, a pro-Assad collective, has sent the league's official site to the penalty box for a five-minute major. 

Users who clicked "OK" on the notification were then routed to the following image:

The Independent, which was also impacted by the hack, has more:

Some users attempting to access the sites saw a notification saying “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).” The message did not appear for all users and seemed to hit mostly those using Apple devices, though some users of Google Chrome on PCs reported the same problems ...

The Chicago Tribune, CNBC, PC World, Forbes and the Telegraph were reported by Twitter users to have been hit by the attack. Sites from across the world, including the official page of French football club Toulouse FC, the NHL's website and Canadian broadcaster CBC, were reported to have been involved in the attack.

The SEA appeared to take credit for the hack on Twitter, and wished those impacted a "happy thanks giving."

The Guardian provides more background on the group:

The Syrian Electronic Army are a state-sponsored group operating under Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria. The group has attacked numerous targets since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and the Guardian.

Most recently, the Sun and the Sunday Times were attacked by the group in June of this year.

Unlike many state-sanctioned hack attacks, the SEA tends to focus on extremely public targets, and uses its successes to promote its cause and gain publicity. It is also notable for attacking its targets using a mixture of social engineering and “spear phishing,” rather than exploiting computer vulnerabilities.

On its official website, the SEA describes itself as "a group of young Syrians, not belonging to any government entity."