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A cyberattack resulting in data theft impacted News Corp, an American media and publishing enterprise extended across various domains like news media, book publishing, cable television, and real estate data. The company owns many news brands.

Who Was Targeted and What Data Was Accessed?

According to CyberNews, the threat actors targeted journalists working for big news enterprises. These included brands like The New York Post, UK’s The Sun and The Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Hackers managed to gain access to journalists’ email accounts and various documents like article drafts. Another person cognizant of the investigation also said that Google Drive documents employed by some journalists at Wall Street Journal were impacted.

Even if data leakage happened, the company stated that customer data was not impacted.

In January 2022, the Company discovered that one of these systems was the target of persistent cyberattack activity. Together with an outside cybersecurity firm, the Company is conducting an investigation into the circumstances of the activity to determine its nature, scope, duration and impacts. The Company’s preliminary analysis indicates that foreign government involvement may be associated with this activity, and that data was taken. To the Company’s knowledge, its systems housing customer and financial data were not affected.

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The company also mentioned that business units like HarperCollins Publishers, Move, News Corp Australia, Foxtel, REA, and Storyful were not impacted by the cyberattack, as per the Reuters publication.

Who Is Behind the News Corp Cyberattack?

The company hired the cybersecurity firm Mandiant to conduct an investigation on this issue. According to researchers at Mandiant, it is believed that behind this cyberattack are China-backed hackers engaged in espionage activities.

Mandiant assesses that those behind this activity have a China nexus and believes they are likely involved in espionage activities to collect intelligence to benefit China’s interests.

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In line with CNN Business, dozens of journalists working for the Wall Street Journal were targeted in these cyberattacks, especially reporters and editors who handled China-related topics.

According to the Reuters publication, a Chinese Embassy in Washington’s spokesperson declared that he did not know these details, but mentioned that

there can be a professional, responsible, and evidence-based approach to identifying cyber-related incidents, rather than making allegations based on speculations.

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How Can Heimdal™ Help?

Email security is a must-have in today’s threat landscape and proper email accounts protection can only be achieved with efficient tools. Use our Email Security, a product that combines Office 365 support with proprietary e-mail threat prevention to keep away email malware, monitoring in real-time your email flow.

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Andra Andrioaie

Security Enthusiast

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Hi! My name is Andra and I am a passionate writer interested in a variety of topics. I am curious about the cybersecurity world and what I want to achieve through what I write is to keep you curious too!

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