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Washington Post Hacked, a Day After New York Times

Posted by timothy on from the paper-of-record dept.

barlevg writes "A day after the New York Times was brought down by a cyber attack, the Washington Post reported being hacked, with various news stories being redirected to the website of the Syrian Electronic Army. It's been speculated that this is the work of the same hacking syndicate that compromised both news organizations last year."

18 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. More information by barlevg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Submitter here.

    The NYT themselves claims they weren't hacked. This probably would have been a better choice for the first link than the humor column I originally chose. This non-attack-related downtime cause is elaborated on further in this article posted to zdnet (thx trb).

    On the other hand, Fox Business is also citing an unnamed source in saying it was a cyber attack. On the other hand, an unnamed source in a burlap sack is worth the sack.

    1. Re:More information by VortexCortex · · Score: 2, Funny

      On the other hand, [...] On the other hand.

      Y-you have three hands?! You're a Martian aren't you? Oh! Was that your mom in Total Recall?

    2. Re:More information by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Informative

      Y-you have three hands?! You're a Martian aren't you?

      Clearly he's a Motie.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    3. Re:More information by OglinTatas · · Score: 4, Informative

      you beat me to it.
      The proper expression is
      On the one hand [one expression]
      on the other hand [other expression]
      on the gripping hand [gripping expression]

      It was this idiom in general usage that lead human authorities to believe that quarantine had failed.

      Niven: The Mote in God's Eye
      and The Gripping Hand

      --
      More music, fewer hits
    4. Re:More information by Noughmad · · Score: 2

      There are sequels to the Mote? Must... read...

      --
      PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
  2. Being talked about by foxbusiness ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... is a cyber attack in itself ;-P

  3. WaPo vs. NYT by OakDragon · · Score: 4, Funny

    New York Times Web site goes down, panicked mobs stream into street demanding to know the trends

    Who knows if one, or more, of these newspaper sites are hacked? I cannot tell anymore...

    --
    Dark Reflection
  4. NYT not hacked. by Longstaff · · Score: 5, Informative

    Former NYT Digital, Core Infrastructure Engineer here. The outage yesterday was a problem with their load balancers caused by internal action. Stop reading the nonsense posted by Fox Business News.

    1. Re:NYT not hacked. by barlevg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, sorry about that. I was basing the story off the speculation that was circulating yesterday at the time of the outage (and it wasn't just Fox Business News). It was only after I hit "submit" that I found the NYTimes blog post about it being not an attack.

    2. Re:NYT not hacked. by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 3, Funny

      ...a problem with their load balancers caused by internal actions.

      Did you try modulating the shield harmonics?

    3. Re:NYT not hacked. by Longstaff · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Fox Business were the first to "break" the story with a "source close to the matter". Everybody went off their lead. Every single technical statement in the article is incorrect and/or laughable. http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/08/14/new-york-times-site-experiences-major-outage/

    4. Re:NYT not hacked. by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

      They must have updated it because there's nothing really bad at that link. They even mention an update.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  5. extra, extra! news orgs don't learn! extra! by swschrad · · Score: 2

    news of the day: they restored backups and didn't close the holes. special edition, 50 cents, read all about it.

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
  6. maintenance updates during the day ? by KernelMuncher · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seriously, what competent IT shop pushes out maintenance updates during peak viewing times ? Our company schedules that work for Friday nights, just in case something unexpected happens. At the very least they should have saved the update until the late evening shift.

    The NY Times doesn't sound like they are telling the entire truth.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/business/media/new-york-times-web-site-returns-after-hours-offline.html?_r=0

    1. Re:maintenance updates during the day ? by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Who says it was scheduled work? Sometimes things happen... certs expire, equipment fails... so you have to do work in the middle of the day. I had to log in remotely via a laptop and 4G hotspot once while I was riding in a canoe on the 4th of July to bring some stuff back up. Bad luck doesn't turn off during business hours and holidays.

    2. Re:maintenance updates during the day ? by Longstaff · · Score: 4, Informative

      (former NYT Engineer) Some potentially disruptive maintenance that can be localized to a single team (say, storage maintenance) would be pushed to an overnight change window. However, emergency reachability for certain teams at NYT can problematic, so some (expected) low-impact work requiring multiple teams is done during the day. They have multiple data centers and everything is fully redundant, so updates can happen to service-drained components, be tested and then flipped once verified. Apparently that could not or did not happen here.

      FTR, the entire Digital Core Infrastructure team (responsible for Storage, Virtual Infrastructure, OS Mgmt, App Support and some networking) resigned approximately 3 months ago.

    3. Re:maintenance updates during the day ? by Longstaff · · Score: 3, Informative

      We left for separate opportunities; all within 6 weeks of each other. 100% related to management interference / incompetence.

  7. Outbrain Hacked -- Leads to defacement on WP,CNN by ItsPaPPy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The SEA hacked Outbrain, which is a content provider. CNN, WP, NY Times, all use this companies software to recommend stories to readers.

    http://thehackernews.com/2013/08/Outbrain-hacked-Syrian-Electronic-Army.html

    http://techblog.outbrain.com/2013/08/update-outbrain-security-breach/