News Corp, a media conglomerate, revealed Friday that it was the victim of a cyberattack “affecting a limited amount of email accounts and files” from its headquarters. This attack also included publications such as Dow Jones, News UK and New York Post.
In an email to staff, David Kline, chief technology officer and Billy O’Brien, chief information security officer wrote that “our preliminary analysis suggests that foreign government involvement could be associated with this activity and that some data was stolen”.
Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm, is helping the Wall Street Journal publisher to investigate the hack. It linked the attack with China.
“Mandiant believes that the people behind this activity have a China connection, and we believe they may be involved in spying activities to collect intelligence to help China’s interests,” David Wong (Vice President of Consulting at Mandiant), stated in a statement to CBS News.
News Corp stated that the attack on last month did not target other business units such as HarperCollins Publishers and Move, News Corp Australia Foxtel, REA and Storyful.
News Corp shared the hack first in a Friday filing to the SEC. Although the company admitted that data had been stolen during its initial investigation, the filing also stated that the Company knew that financial and customer data systems were unaffected.
News Corp stated that preliminary results point to a supply-chain hack. It reported that it discovered that a third-party provider used to support its technology, and that “cloud-based” systems were the victim of persistent cyberattack activity.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the hack news.
