For the third time in three years, The Washington Post has been compromised by cyber criminals. The breach which was reported by the newspaper yesterday is still being investigated, as security personnel are trying to determine the full extent of the damage.
According to an article published by the Post yesterday, the publication was made aware of the intrusion by outside computer security consultants Mandiant. Employee user names and passwords that were stored in a encrypted format were said to be the main focus of the hack. Officials of the company have already advised their employees to changed all their passwords since then. Investigators are saying that the intrusion only lasted a few days and there is no evidence that subscriber information such as credit card or home information was accessed. There also was no concern that any sensitive employee data was accessed by the breach.
News organizations have been the target of hackers as of late, earlier this year the New York Times said that China-based hackers had been consistently intruding their internal servers for four months straight. They reported that hackers were able to obtain passwords from their reporters and other employees causing minimal damage. Around the same time the Wall Street Journal was compromised, and in February the Washington Post was attacked by suspected hackers from China as well. The recent attack on the Post began with an intrusion on a server used by the publication’s foreign staff which subsequently spread to their servers.
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