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NY Times Confirms Website was Hacked

August 27, 2013

NY Times Website Hacked

By Gilbert Falso :: 4:46 PM

The NY Times this afternoon confirmed the reason behind the downtime for its website – the newspaper has been a victim of a hacker attack.

In a Tweet sent out around 4:30 PM, the Times said, “we hear some users are having issues accessing the site. We are investigating, and we will report back soon. Apologies.”

Although no group has yet taken formal credit for the attack, a message from the Syrian Electronic Army, a group that has defaced or taken down a number of high profile media sites over the past several months, appeared on the site for a few minutes this afternoon.

A Times spokesperson confirmed the issue, saying that the paper’s initial assessment is, “this is most likely the result of a malicious external attack.”

The Wall Street Journal has temporarily taken down its paywall, allowing non-subscribers to access news stories on the site while its rival is unreachable.

A screenshot of the hacked site is below:

Syrian Electronic Army NY Times