...producers of Windows, Office, and the late Microsoft Bob, contributed $852,167 to the 2008 Obama campaign...
, was hacked by cyber criminals claiming to be supporters of Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
on New Year's day, with anti-surveillance messages posted on its social media sites and blog.
The attack appears to be the first time a company that is alleged to have been involved in the US National Security Agency's surveillance programme has been targeted by the hackers.
The cyber criminals wrote "hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army . . . Stop Spying!" on a Skype blog page and used Skype's Twitter account to tell the Federal Bureau of Investigation to "stop spying on people".
On the company's Facebook page, the hackers told people not to use Microsoft's email services such as Outlook and Hotmail, claiming "they are monitoring your accounts and selling it to governments".
The Syrian Electronic Army, a group of hackers that supports the Syrian president in the country's civil war, repeated the same messages from its own Twitter account.
"We recently became aware of a targeted cyber attack that led to access to Skype's social media properties, but these credentials were quickly reset. No user information was compromised," a Skype spokesperson said.