Washington Post admits website hack

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos just purchased the Washington Post — and despite jokes, I am pretty sure he didn’t do it by accidentally clicking the “Buy it Now” button. Plans at this point are unknown, but one thing is certain — there are already problems to deal with. The newspaper has admitted that its web site was recently hacked.

The announcement came in two parts yesterday. The first red simply that “the Washington Post Web site was hacked today, with readers on certain stories being redirected to the site of the Syrian Electronic Army. The group is a hacker collective that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad”.

An hour later the organization updated this with additional information — “Washington Post Managing Editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: ‘A few days ago, The Syrian Electronic Army, allegedly, subjected Post newsroom employees to a sophisticated phishing attack to gain password information. The attack resulted in one staff writer’s personal Twitter account being used to send out a Syrian Electronic Army message. For 30 minutes this morning, some articles on our web site were redirected to the Syrian Electronic Army’s site. The Syrian Electronic Army, in a Tweet, claimed they gained access to elements of our site by hacking one of our business partners, Outbrain. We have taken defensive measures and removed the offending module. At this time, we believe there are no other issues affecting The Post site'”.

Welcome to the newspaper industry Mr. Bezos. This is something not experienced at Amazon, but when you run a publication that can post stories on subjects that could be considered politically charged, then things change. Everyone may want to buy a new book or laptop, but not all wish to read opposing views.

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