More than four-fifths of the world's leading media organizations have been targeted by hacker allegedly involving government agencies, according to a study by two Google.
Shane Hadley and Morgan Marquis Bouard presented the results of their work at the Black Hat Asia 2014 conference in Singapore. As the research shows, journalists are a very common target of government hackers.
Specifically, 21 of the world's top 25 news organizations appear to have been targeted. The attacks came from hackers who either worked for or supported governments.
"If you're a journalist or a news organization, we're going to see state targeting, and we're seeing it happen regardless of region, all over the world, wherever the targets are and wherever they come from," Hadley told Reuters.
The two researchers did not reveal details about how Google monitors these activities, but noted that the company "monitors state actors who attack its users.".
Several American news outlets have reported attacks on them in the past year, and Forbes, the Financial Times and the NY Times have all been targeted by the “Syrian Electronic Army,” which supports President Assad’s regime. Hadley also added that Chinese hackers recently gained access to a major Western news organization, which he did not name, through a fake questionnaire sent to staff.
According to Marquis Bouard, while these attacks are nothing new, research shows that attacks on news organizations and journalists that go unreported are far more common than those that are made public. He noted that these organizations appear to be slower than other businesses to take action to address the phenomenon. “Many news organizations are now waking up,” he said, adding that smaller media outlets, citizen journalists and bloggers are also being targeted.
