The massive media and publishing business News Corp reported a data breach in February 2022, disclosing that its journalists had been the focus of an attack on a software supply chain. The breach revealed that the journalists had been hacked. The assets owned by News Corp. include a variety of prominent news sources, such as Dow Jones, FOX News, The Sun, and MarketWatch, amongst others. It is important to note that in March of 2019, the Dow Jones made news for disclosing a “screening list” that included critical information on terrorists, criminals, and shady enterprises. This information included names, addresses, and phone numbers.
The leak of thirteen million data took place on the FOX News website in April of 2022. The fifty-eight terabytes’ worth of information consisted of a variety of different things, including the company’s internal documents, the personally identifiable information (PII) of its workers, and many other things. Prior to the time when the firm was made aware of the occurrence, these documents continued to be accessible to the general public.
Today, the business has disclosed new information saying that the security breach really took place in February of 2020. This indicates that the hackers were present on the network for a period of two years before being discovered. Mandiant, which is now owned by Google, was the cybersecurity company that helped News Corp. back then. Because the perpetrators had access to the system for two years before they were discovered, it is highly likely that they were able to get away with stealing more information than was initially thought. Since no one knew it had been stolen, they would not have been on heightened alert for any potential attacks during that time.
The firm disclosed in a breach notice that the threat actors responsible for the incident gained access to its email and document storage system. This system is used by a variety of News Corp companies. The impacted workers’ personal and health information was obtained; nevertheless, the corporation has said that it does not seem that the activity was centered on exploiting personal information in any way.
The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and its news operations in the United Kingdom were among the News Corp publications that were compromised as a result of the security hack. Names, birth dates, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, information about bank accounts, as well as information on medical and health insurance, were some of the pieces of personally identifiable information that were accessed.
News Corporation has indicated in the past that the assailants had links to China and were probably engaged in espionage operations to gather information for the benefit of China’s objectives.
The New York Post admitted that it had been hacked in October 2022, after discovering that its website and Twitter account had been exploited to distribute inappropriate information that targeted a number of different politicians in the United States. The newspaper eventually disclosed that one of its own workers was responsible for the incident, and that individual was terminated once their role in the scandal was uncovered.
Information security specialist, currently working as risk infrastructure specialist & investigator.
15 years of experience in risk and control process, security audit support, business continuity design and support, workgroup management and information security standards.
