China Suspected In Cyberattack Against US News Corp
New York - A cyberattack, discovered on January 20th was carried out against the New York based 'News Corp' which reportedly accessed emails and documents of various employees in the company, including that of journalists, which could possibly have been the main target of the attack. Dow Jones and New York Post also affected.
On January 20th the hack was uncovered and it was found that it not only impacted News Corp, but also other 'publications and businesses' according to the New York Post. Those that were affected by the attack included the Journal, New York Post, Dow Jones, News Corp headquarters as well as News Corps operations in Britain.
As soon as the hack was found out law enforcement was contacted according to News Corp, and the company got in touch with the cybersecurity firm Mandiant Inc. to aid in investigating the cyberattacks.
"Mandiant assesses that those behind this activity have a China nexus, and we believe they are likely involved in espionage activities to collect intelligence to benefit China’s interests" David Wong, VP of Mandiant's incident response stated.
Mandiant put out a statement to News Corp saying that its assessment indicates that data was taken but that they believe the threat has now been contained. "
chief executive of both Dow Jones and a publisher at The Wall Street Journal Almar Latour stated "We are committed to protecting our journalists and sources. We will not be deterred from our purpose—to provide uniquely trusted journalism and analysis. We will continue to publish the important stories of our time".
According to the Wall Street Journal, both officials and security experts have stated that journalists are often 'high-priority targets for hackers seeking to gain intelligence on behalf of foreign governments, because they speak to sources who might have valuable or sensitive information'.
Although China has continued to claim that they do not carry out cyberattacks, FBI Director Christopher Wray recently stated that Beijing is currently running a "massive, sophisticated hacking program that is bigger than those of every other major nation combined" and said that the FBI has over 2,000 active investigations linked to allegations of theft of U.S. information or technology by the Chinese government.