A short history of hacking attacks against the media

The revelation of the Chinese hacking campaign against reporters working for the New York Times has raised awareness of targeted malware attacks, but what does the history of cyberattacks against media agencies look like?

Here’s a short (and definitely incomplete) list of some of the stories we have seen over the years, where news agencies have fallen foul of hackers and cybercriminals:

August 2008 A full-blown conflict between Russian and Georgian forces spills over into defacements and denial-of-service attacks against a number of websites. These include the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website – where hackers posted a collage of photographs comparing Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili to Adolf Hitler.

One of the sites impacted by the…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.