Guardian Says It Was Hit by Cyberattack

The Guardian says that it has been hit by a suspected ransomware attack but that its online publishing is, evidently, largely unaffected. Executives said the newspaper hopes to go ahead with its Thursday print edition. The British paper reported "a serious IT incident" starting Tuesday night, and staff at its London offices were told to work from home for the rest of the week. "We believe this to be a ransomware attack but are continuing to consider all possibilities," Guardian Media Group chief executive Anna Bates and editor-in-chief Katherine Viner told staff. "We are continuing to publish globally to our website and apps and although some of our internal systems are affected, we are confident we will be able to publish in print tomorrow."

"Our technology teams have been working to deal with all aspects of this incident, with the vast majority of our staff able to work from home as we did during the pandemic," Bates and Viner said. Jake Moore at security software firm ESET tells the BBC that he's not surprised the Guardian was targeted. "News organisations have become a regular target for cyberattacks this year, and these attacks often have even more damaging effects on the companies targeted," Moore says. TechCrunch reports that while ransomware attackers often threaten to publish data unless a ransom is paid, it's not clear whether there was any ransom demand in this attack, which has yet to be claimed by any major ransomware group. (In October, the New York Post's website was hijacked by a rogue employee.)