The cyberattack, discovered on Jan. 20, 2022 affected units including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the U.K. news operation.
It appears the cyberattack was likely orchestrated from China in order to gather intelligence to benefit the country’s interests.
The News Corp investigation detected that the intrusion appeared to date to at least February 2020, and scores of employees were impacted.
The hackers were able to access reporters’ emails and Google Docs, including drafts of articles. News Corp was still trying to determine the full extent of emails and documents that were accessed by the hackers.
While the hackers accessed the Google system used by News Corp employees, there was no indication that they breached the system through a compromise at Google. Google’s own systems weren’t affected by the incident, a Google spokeswoman said.
Reporters who were affected by the hack and were briefed on it expressed concerns to company officials about protecting their sources’ identities.
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he was unfamiliar with the incident. “China firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms,” the Chinese spokesman stated.
News Corp said it would share information about the hack with other news organizations so they can protect themselves.
Thoughts
After reading these news stories about this cyberattack the pattern is always the same. The intrusion has been going on for many months to years, a cloud service is involved and a cyber security firm is hired after the cyberattack.
It is of public interest to see the cyberattack information that News Corp will share if there is any information of value.
It appears that News Corp employees were using Google Docs that was also compromised by the alleged Chinese hackers.
I have a simple question: why didn’t Google see the malicious traffic via their Cloud Google Docs system back in February 2020, setup a honey pot and have some fun with these hackers? See what they are looking for, then as a grand finale place a nice juicy news story in pdf format with a ransomware payload embedded in it for the hackers to digest.
That would have been a way better outcome, and suddenly the cyberattack traffic ends for a few hours.
We can only dream of these outcomes and think some day.
References:
Reference 1: CNN – Suspected Chinese hackers hit News Corp with persistent cyberattack
Reference 2: The Verge – Wall Street Journal owner News Corp suffers cyberattack by hackers linked to China
Reference 3: Wall Street Journal – Cyberattack on News Corp, Believed Linked to China, Targeted Emails of Journalists, Others
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