The oldest newspaper in Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia Inquirer, was the victim of a cyber attack last weekend that crippled its internal systems. As a result, the Sunday issue of the publication was unable to be printed and was only available in electronic format. The May 15 issue was also delayed and released in an abbreviated format due to the attack. According to a report by the publication, this is the largest failure the Inquirer has experienced since the snow storm in January 1996.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has a large audience of more than 13 million people per month and covers both local and federal events. Lisa Hughes, an official representative of the publication, confirmed that the attack was discovered on Saturday after Cynet Systems, the cybersecurity company that serves The Philadelphia Inquirer, reported anomalies. As a precaution, some computer systems were disconnected.
To investigate the incident, The Philadelphia Inquirer has sought the help of the FBI and independent specialists from Kroll. It is still unclear who is responsible for the attack and whether the data of customers or employees of the newspaper were compromised. The publication has pledged to inform customers and employees if any personal information was affected.
Unfortunately, cyber attacks on media outlets in the United States are not uncommon. In February of this year, the News Corp media giant revealed that its network had been compromised by hackers in China who had access for two years. During that time, the cyber criminals were able to steal a large amount of email and documents from many subsidiaries of News Corp, including The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, and Fox News.