UK-based regional media group Newsquest suffered a major cyber attack that disrupted the company’s daily operations and prevented journalists from publishing their articles.
London-based Newsquest is owned by American mass media holding company Gannet and is considered as one of the largest publishers of regional and local newspapers in the UK.
The news came to light when local news agencies started reporting issues Newsquest was facing, such as staff being unable to upload stories to its websites and apps. According to Southern Daily Echo, a news site managed by Newsquest, the media organisation has been a victim of a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack since Monday.
A DDoS attack knocks a website offline by flooding it with junk traffic and has been a major threat to businesses in recent times.
“Since Monday, this website has suffered some intermittent disruption, which may have affected your reader experience, as well as your access to our associated digital edition and app,” the Daily Echo said.
“This has been caused by a series of cyber-attacks known as “distributed denial-of-service” (DDOS). We have been able to contain most of these attacks, but some readers will have experienced a disruption,” it added.
The news outlet assured its readers that it found no evidence of any reader or subscriber data being accessed or compromised as a result of the data security incident. It also claimed that none of the systems suffered any damages.
“We appreciate this must be frustrating and apologize for these issues. We are fully aware so there is no need to report these issues to us. In the meantime, thank you for your patience and your ongoing support,” the outlet added.
The company has notified the National Cyber Security Centre and relevant law enforcement about the cyber attack and is working with them to resolve the issue at the earliest.
Commenting on the news, CEO of Closed Door Security, William Wright said, “It sounds like reporters have been unable to digitally file their stories, which echoes the attack on the Guardian newspaper that happened just before Christmas last year. Hopefully Newsquest will be able to recover quickly and won’t suffer the downtime the Guardian experienced.
“DDoS attacks often don’t get as much publicity as ransomware today, but that doesn’t make them any less severe. In some cases, they are used to hide a data breach, while some attacks are carried out purely with the motivation of putting an organisation out of operation.
“The attack highlights the importance of IoT security because IoT devices are often recruited into botnets to execute DDoS attacks. Organisations must embed IoT devices into their corporate security programs and assess and test them continuously for vulnerabilities. This is the best way to ensure their assets don’t get recruited into a botnet, and they are then unwittingly part of a DDoS attack against another organisation,” Wright added.
