New York Times Hacked - Why?

With a decision soon to be made within a matter of days regarding possible Western intervention in Syria, some US websites have fallen prey to hackers. Foremost among these is the New York Times. As to who these hackers really are, that remains to be seen. The Australian IT company handling the domain of the New York Times indicated that the breach came from a domain reseller that was based in the US. The reseller has yet to be named.

To quote:

"Melbourne IT said credentials of one of its resellers (the username and password) were used to access a reseller account on Melbourne IT's systems." 

"Melbourne IT chief executive Theo Hnarakis, who announced on Tuesday he would step down by the end of the year, told Fairfax Media he wasn't prepared to name the reseller but said it was based in the US." 

(Sydney Morning Herald, August 28, 2013)

Initially and speaking speculatively it would seem that the propaganda machines are running in full force from all fronts. There are so many unverifiable pieces of information that are floating around and are being presented as facts. Worst, everybody is speculating based on speculations based on propaganda. To such extent that meaningful discussion is becoming obliterated to the extremes. 

For one, posing the question of who these Syrian Electronic Army are seems quite circular in nature. Moreover, hacking the New York Times doesn't seem to make much sense if propaganda is their agenda. What would that accomplish except raise the suspicion against the US government itself?

Think about it. If Western information dissemination is what the Syrians are after, they should have hacked Google itself because of its capability to aggregate information not just from one US based newspaper but all over the world. 

This brings us to the hypothesis that the act of hacking was not meant to paralyze US media because that is practically impossible, but to send a message of confusion and further speculation. To be sure, it was meant to polarize the discourse and feed the fires of wanton speculation that would surely emanate from the act of hacking itself. 

The key to finding the truth here is in determining the identity of the US based domain reseller and to find their links and political affiliation.