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The Media Security

Washington Post Hacked, a Day After New York Times 98

Posted by timothy 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."
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Washington Post Hacked, a Day After New York Times More

Washington Post Hacked, a Day After New York Times

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  • More information (Score:5, Informative)

    by barlevg ( 2111272 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @12:15PM (#44574623)

    Submitter here.

    The NYT themselves claims they weren't hacked. [nytimes.com] 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). [zdnet.com]

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

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by VortexCortex ( 1117377 )

      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?

      • No, he's a juggler. Or a magician.

      • Re:More information (Score:5, Informative)

        by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @12:25PM (#44574721) Journal

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

        Clearly he's a Motie.

        • Re:More information (Score:4, Informative)

          by OglinTatas ( 710589 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @12:33PM (#44574825)

          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

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

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

              Depending where in the world you buy it, the name of the sequel is different. In most of the world, it's The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye, but in the US it's The Gripping Hand.

              • Also note: There were a few chapters of 'A Mote in Gods Eye' (the initial space battle) that were removed from the book (for length). You can find that in one of the 'There Will be War' series of books. The # escapes me.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Be fair: Niven & Pournelle.

            Yes, they're probably Niven's aliens, but the stories are set in Pournelle's CoDominium universe.

            • thanks. it was an oversight. Many of Niven's best books were actually collaborations, and Pournelle's collaborations were among the best of those.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by jmccue ( 834797 )
          Dies that mean the Syrian Electronic Army is at the Crazy Eddie Point ?
      • As in, back to the first hand. Is there a less awkward / more correct way of wording that?

        • As in, back to the first hand. Is there a less awkward / more correct way of wording that?

          On the first hand....

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          As in, back to the first hand. Is there a less awkward / more correct way of wording that?

          I'd start with not using a hand metaphor for comparisons between more than two things if you happen to be part of a species not commonly known for having more than two hands.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

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

        No, he's a Motie. [wikipedia.org]

      • 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?

        He's just zis guy, you know! He's Zaphod Beeblebrox

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

        He could also be Zaphod Beeblebrox. However, because three is apparently only the lower bound on his number of hands, he could easily be a Jatravartid of Viltvodle VI.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by danlip ( 737336 )

      So NYT is claiming they were doing scheduled maintenance during the busiest time of the day. Really? Who the f*ck is running their IT department?

      • What IT department? I thought everything was Cloud-based now, and that the Cloud meant that businesses didn't need IT anymore...

        What, you mean that we might still need an IT department? That we've been lied to? Well, we better run down to the basement, and put a stop to some of the more vocal employees mooning the previously ex-IT employees while they were cleaning out their desks...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gVibe ( 997166 )
      Remember kids...anything coming from a Fox affiliated network has been tainted. Usually an unnamed source for Fox is that voice in the head of the reporter or whatever they call themselves.

  • Being talked about by foxbusiness ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15, 2013 @12:21PM (#44574683)

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

  • WaPo vs. NYT (Score:5, Funny)

    by OakDragon ( 885217 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @12:40PM (#44574893) Journal
    New York Times Web site goes down, panicked mobs stream into street demanding to know the trends [washingtonpost.com]

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

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well, the entire U.S. of A. was hacked many years ago, and they're all still trying to find out what happened. I know, but I'm not sayin who, exactly - I will give a hint. It starts with a "G" and rhymes with "shmoverment".

  • Free Syrian Army = Illuminati/Aristocracy contractors

    Probably eastern european, just by odds...but I wouldn't be surprised if it was an American company...

    Hell it could be the same company that gets all the AC bots here on /.

    Democracy in Syria would significantly harm some old and relied-upon revenue streams for rich white people (oil from Iran to England).

    Our governments have been installing figurehead assholes in that region for centuries and Assad is no different.

    These attacks are to provoke conflict in

    • Original post should read: "Syrian Electronic Army"

      also: Syrian Electronic Army = Illuminati/Aristocracy contractors...

      i deserved my downmods b/c my post was confusing as hell...no wonder the responses made no sense

  • NYT not hacked. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Longstaff ( 70353 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @12:42PM (#44574917)
    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.

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

  • maintenance updates during the day ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KernelMuncher ( 989766 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @12:44PM (#44574939)
    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 [nytimes.com]

    • Re:maintenance updates during the day ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @12:56PM (#44575069)

      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.

      • from the article in my post:

        'The outage occurred within seconds of a scheduled maintenance update being pushed out'

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by wift ( 164108 )

        Laptop in a canoe sounds dangerous and kinda wonderful in a contrasting sort of way.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mouldy ( 1322581 )
      Thats not a universal philosophy. If something breaks late Friday night - who's going to be around to fix it? We only push stuff live after vigorous QA & review and we're as sure as we can be that it won't break anything. If it does break something, it's going to be something pretty obscure and we sure as hell want as many engineers around as possible to be available to help fix it or to make the call to rollback if a fix isn't forthcoming. The odds of the small team online late on friday knowing enoug

    • Re:maintenance updates during the day ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Longstaff ( 70353 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @03:00PM (#44576279)
      (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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      Oh boy. Well, when you have a couple hundred (or thousand) hosts, you can't really fit it into any particular window. These websites are also read 24 hours a day by people all over our planet, so there isn't really a "good time".

    • 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.

      Just like FedGov with bad news.

  • Outbrain Hacked -- Leads to defacement on WP,CNN (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ItsPaPPy ( 1182035 ) on Thursday August 15, 2013 @01:09PM (#44575195) Homepage
    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 [thehackernews.com]

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

  • Obviously there is continued FUD propagated on Slashdot in order for this story to be posted with one slant versus the other.

    If Slashdot's moderator is right (and contrary to the tipster) then Slashdot actually has knowledge and somehow participated in the hacking attempts in order to even paint the news event in a particular light. If Slashdot is NOT involved (but still moderates contrary to the tipster) then Slashdot's editors are promulgating fear and doubt into the minds of its readers.

    Either way, this

  • Is the Syrian Electronic Army the 'good' guys or the 'bad' guys? Are they getting money, or are they getting droned? Or maybe both?

    • They're pro-Assad [wikipedia.org], so it depends on whether you consider Assad to have committed unforgivable atrocities or whether you consider him the legitimate president of Syria.

      • I'm not sure I understand. Am I supposed to take sides between two evil bastards, or what? Sounds like a coin toss to me. I think I'll ask my bookie before I place any bets...

        • It's a similar problem to what happened in Egypt during the first revolution. On the one hand, you have a dictatorial despot (Mubarak, Assad). On the other, you have pro-democracy revolutionaries who may not be friendly to Western interests (Egypt democratically elected Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood). So when deciding who to "root for" you have to ask yourself: do you believe in democracy above all else, or are you more interested in seeing a pro-West government in power? It's a tricky question, and it's

  • A hacker hacked a rag and hacks reported the hacker hacking the rag and hackers hacked another rag and more hacks wrote about hackers hacking the other rag.

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