NYT admins to cyber-attacks against its Moscow bureau

Aug 24, 2016 01:55 GMT  ·  By

CNN is reporting that the FBI and other US state security agencies are investigating a series of cyber-attacks that have targeted The York Times and other unnamed US media outlets.

US officials that provided CNN the exclusive said investigators believe that Russian state hackers are behind the attacks.

Officials believe this may be the work of the same hackers that have attacked the DNC and DCCC, two groups of the Democratic Party, during the recent US presidential election campaign.

In a report from last week from ThreatConnect, the security vendor has linked the very same group to attacks against the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS, also CAS).

New York Times confirms some of the attacks

Contacted by CNN, the New York Times initially said it did not find any evidence of the attacks or that any of its systems were compromised.

In an article on their own website, the New York publication later admitted to cyber-attacks against its Moscow bureau but said that there was no evidence of a successful.

The Times has also hired several cyber-security firms to investigate the attacks, CNN's source revealed.

CNN said the cyber-attacks targeted the Times' email service. The Times said their email service was outsourced to Google, and that no intrusion was detected.

Geopolitical tensions are rising between the two countries like never before

The attacks make sense since New York Times reporters often get exclusives and scoops regarding upcoming US legislative, military, and political machinations before the general public does.

Compromising a journalist's email inbox can yield a lot of strategic information for a foreign cyber-intelligence agency.

Tensions between Russia and the US have been rising, not only in cyberspace but in the geopolitical field, especially after Russia's invasion of the Crimea Peninsula in 2014, and the subsequent Ukraine war.