The Washington Post reported yet another attack on its servers Wednesday, granting hackers access to user names and passwords of the employees. The hacker group remains anonymous but the paper suspects Chinese intruders.
Cybersecurity has become a growing concern, especially among news agencies. The Washington Post recently reported a third hack attack in the last three years. The hackers got into the Post's servers accessing employees' user names and passwords.
The attack on the Post's servers was reported Wednesday by Mandiant, a cybersecurity contractor that monitors the paper's online networks. According to the paper's officials, the attack lasted for a short duration and an investigation is ongoing.
"This is an ongoing investigation, but we believe it was a few days at most," Washington Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti, said in a statement.
The Washington Post officials blame Chinese hackers for the intrusion, which is likely after the paper's previous investigation in 2011 strongly pointed to hackers from China. Anonymous Chinese hackers have also been linked to other news agency cyber attacks in the past including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and a wide range of Washington-based human rights groups and defense contractors, according to Wednesday's report.
The WP officials believe the attack on their servers originated from a server used by the agency's foreign staff and then they moved on to other servers.
The officials say that no sensitive information such as subscribers' credit cards and home addresses has been compromised. The publishing systems, emails and employees' personal information like social security number remained untouched, according to the Post officials.
