It is believed that the malware attack was carried out from outside the United States.
The Los Angeles Times suffered a malware attack earlier this Saturday that disrupted printing and delivery process for several of its print editions across the country, the newspaper said.
The malware attack, according to LA Times, was conducted from “outside” the United States and crippled its computer system delaying weekend deliveries of its and other newspapers including the California Times printing in LA.
Other affected newspapers included Chicago Tribune, the San Diego Union-Tribune, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Capital Gazette in Annapolis, New York Daily News, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal’s Southern California editions were also among affected services because they share the same production platform.
“We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more specifically servers, as opposed to looking to steal information,” an anonymous source within the company said.
Initially, the malware targeted the LA Times’ server on Thursday and by Friday it started interrupting the transmission of pages to printing presses as publication deadlines approached. Although the attack is still under investigation, Tribune Publishing of New York Daily News reached its readers with the following statement:
“The personal data of our subscribers, online users, and advertising clients has not been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank our readers and advertising partners for their patience as we investigate the situation.”
This is not the first time that LA Times has suffered a cyber attack. On February 2018, LA Times’ The Homicide Report website was hacked to mine Monero cryptocurrency miner. Furthermore, when it comes to news websites in the United States, The Daily Dot and the Wall Street Journal websites were also compromised by hackers.