New York Times site is disrupted in attack by hackers
The New York Times Web site was unavailable to readers on Tuesday afternoon after an online attack on the company’s domain name registrar. The attack also forced employees of The Times to take care in sending e-mails.
The hacking was just the latest of a major media organization, with The Financial Times and The Washington Post also having their operations disrupted within the last few months. It was also the second time this month that the Web site of The New York Times was unavailable for several hours.
Marc Frons, chief information officer for The New York Times Company, issued a statement at 4:20 p.m. on Tuesday warning employees that the disruption: which appeared to be affecting the Web site well into the evening: was “the result of a malicious external attack.” He advised employees to “be careful when sending e-mail communications until this situation is resolved.”
New York Times.
The New York Times is still feeling the effects of a Tuesday afternoon attack on its Web site. The hack was claimed by a group known as the Syrian Electronic Army, which also took credit for a similar attack on social networking site Twitter.
Tuesday’s intrusions were the most sophisticated in a series of attacks on high-profile Western media organizations – including The Washington Post and the Associated Press. The hackers use the attacks to broadcast their support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, although they has never been found to have any official ties to his regime.
Little is known about the group, which appears to made up of mostly younger people. To date – no person has ever been arrested for being a member.
The group, loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, has been behind multiple attacks on media websites in recent months and, on Twitter, took credit for a sophisticated hack that had hobbled the news site for roughly 20 hours.
“The @nytimes attack was going to deliver an anti-war message but our server couldn’t last for 3 minutes” – the group posted on its Twitter feed at about 9:40 Wednesday morning.
The attack came as governments in several countries considered military action in light of reports that Al-Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people in an effort to quell an uprising calling for his ouster.
“Our website and domain are now down, but it was worth the attempt, for #Syria and world peace” – the group wrote later.
The group said their site was taken down because they violated their registration agreement.
People on Twitter began reporting the New York Times site was down as early as 3 p.m. ET Tuesday. Some users also reported difficulty accessing the Times’ mobile site and apps.
The newspaper posted a message on its Facebook page about 5 p.m. ET that said: “Many users are having difficulty accessing The New York Times online. We are working to fix the problem. Our initial assessment is the outage is most likely the result of a malicious external attack.”