News Insights: News Corp Victim of Cyberattack

News Corp was the recent victim of a cyberattack, with intruders breaking into email accounts and compromising the data of journalists. The main suspect is a group of Chinese hackers.

News Insights:

According to new analysis from Ric Longenecker, CISO at Open Systems: “China being suspected of the attack on News Corp serves as an example of what enterprises should be wary of with foreign tensions being high. Businesses and government agencies need to heed the recent warnings from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and take proper precautions. It is of paramount importance that organizations execute mature, repeatable security missions to protect assets in real time, leveling up security posture for tomorrow. Even more important in a situation developing as quickly as this one is having a global team of security analysts who are monitoring for threats around the clock and ensuring a minimal attack surface.”

Toby Lewis, Global Head of Threat Analysis at Darktrace: “Groups associated with the Chinese gov have long been accused of targeting journalists – often those that report on human rights. However, from my experience, when attacks against media corps are purely for espionage purposes, the real target is not the journalist but their in-country sources.

News Corp have referred to this as a ‘persistent’ nation state attack – a term used in the industry to describe attacks where hackers have very specific objectives. Targets will be hit by low and slow attacks and if the attackers fail to gain access with one method, they will reattempt access until they are successful. The problem is the methods used by these groups are always changing. Traditional defenses that have been used by many media corporations, newspapers, online magazines and broadcasters for the last 20 years can only stop known attacks – attack techniques that have been seen before.

The reality is that media corporations will be under constant attack from the most sophisticated attackers every minute or every day. Reliable and trustworthy sources of media and information are essential and that is why we have seen an uptick in media organizations partnering with artificial intelligence to defend journalists and critical systems. The urgent challenge to be tackled is how to spot, and stop novel attacks quickly before sensitive data gets into the wrong hands and before normal business operations are disrupted.”