Publishing company News Corp has disclosed that it was the victim of a cyber-attack last month.

Threat actors compromised email accounts belonging to journalists and other employees at the company, which Australian-born American media tycoon Rupert Murdoch owes. 

In an email sent to staff members on Friday and viewed by The New York Times, News Corp’s chief technology officer David Kline wrote that “a limited number” of email accounts and documents belonging to News Corp headquarters, News Technology Services, Dow Jones, News UK and The New York Post had been impacted by the incident. 

The security incident was discovered on January 20. It was reported to the relevant authorities and is now being investigated by US law enforcement and by cybersecurity firm, Mandiant.

Kline wrote that the attack is believed to have originated from outside the United States. 

“Our preliminary analysis indicates that foreign government involvement may be associated with this activity, and that some data was taken,” wrote Kline. 

“Mandiant assesses that those behind this activity have a China nexus and believes they are likely involved in espionage activities to collect intelligence to benefit China’s interests.”

Commenting on the attack, iboss CEO Paul Martini said: “This is an early example of what we believe will be a broader escalation of cyber-attacks by nation-state actors in the coming year.

“Just days ago, the FBI labeled Chinese cyber aggression more ‘brazen and damaging’ than ever before and we’re seeing that play out in real time.”

Martini conjectured that the attack was part of an “intelligence gathering campaign that could have broader impacts on US journalism and politics for years to come.”

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, reportedly wrote in an email: “We hope that there can be a professional, responsible and evidence-based approach to identifying cyber-related incidents, rather than making allegations based on speculations.”

Tripwire’s VP of strategy, Tim Erlin, commented: “Cyber-attack attribution is extremely difficult, and while the casual reader may draw the conclusion here that China is responsible (which may be true), it’s worth noting the language that Mandiant uses. 

He added: “The term ‘China nexus’ and the phrase ‘benefit China’s interests’ are both ways of softening the conclusion. In these types of reports, language matters.”

The Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) has shuttered its Professional Online Licensing and Regulatory Information System (POLARIS) after detecting suspicious activity. 

POLARIS stores information about license holders and applicants. The type of information varies for different licenses and may include Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver license numbers and other personally identifying information (PII).

In a statement posted to its website, the DOL said it became aware of unusual goings involving professional and occupational license data during the week commencing January 24 2022. The decision was taken to shut down POLARIS as a precaution while the activity was investigated.

The department said the Washington Office of Cybersecurity was assisting in the safe recovery of the system and in the investigation to determine whether a data breach had occurred. 

“At this time, we have no indication that any other DOL data was affected, such as driver and vehicle licensing information. All other DOL systems are operating normally,” stated the DOL.

It added: “With the support and assistance of nationally recognized cybersecurity experts, we are investigating what happened and what data and people may be affected.”

The department has created an Intent to Renew form to help those professionals who have tried to renew their licenses while POLARIS is down. A call center was set up on February 4 to answer questions by individuals who were impacted by the outage.

DOL has said it will not act against individuals whose license expired while POLARIS was inaccessible.

The department issues over 40 types of licenses. These include driver and vehicle licenses and professional licenses for cosmetologists, real estate brokers, architects, driving instructors and bail bondsmen. 

DOL said that the security incident only appeared to potentially impact professional and occupational license data.

“At this time, we are not aware of any suspicious activity involving other DOL systems, such as the driver and vehicle licensing system (DRIVES),” stated the DOL.

“DRIVES is operating normally. We are monitoring all our systems very carefully.”

The department said it will notify any individuals whose personal data was accessed during the incident and provide them with “further assistance.”

The UK government has unveiled plans to strengthen its Online Safety Bill, which includes the creation of new criminal offenses.

The legislation, first drafted in May 2021, will place new obligations on social media sites and other services hosting user-generated content or allowing people to talk to others online to remove and limit the spread of illegal and harmful content. This includes child sexual abuse, terrorist material and suicide content.

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, will be responsible for holding these firms to account, with the power to fine those failing to meet their duty of care up to £18m or 10% of annual global turnover, whichever is higher.

Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries has now announced that three new offenses relating to abusive and offensive online communications will be included in the bill. This followed a review by the Law Commission, which concluded that current laws in this area have not kept pace with the rise of smartphones and social media. The new offenses are:

A ‘genuinely threatening’ communications offense, where communications are sent or posted to convey a threat of serious harm. This will combat online threats to rape, kill and inflict physical violence or cause people serious financial harm. This is particularly designed to protect public figures such as MPs, celebrities or footballers.
A harm-based communications offense to capture communications sent to cause harm without a reasonable excuse. This offense will be based on the intended psychological harm towards the victim by considering the context in which the communication was sent. It is hoped this will better tackle abusive messages towards women and girls, which may not seem obviously harmful when considered on their own. It is also designed to avoid criminalizing communications sent with no intention to cause harm, such as consensual messages between adults.
An offense for when a person sends a communication they know to be false with the intention to cause non-trivial emotional, psychological or physical harm. This will cover false communications deliberately sent to inflict harm, such as hoax bomb threats, instead of misinformation where people are unaware that what they are sending is false or genuinely believe it to be true.

These offenses will carry different maximum sentences, including up to five years in prison for threatening communications.

Professor Penney Lewis, Commissioner for Criminal Law, explained: “The criminal law should target those who specifically intend to cause harm while allowing people to share contested and controversial ideas in good faith. Our recommendations create a more nuanced set of criminal offenses, which better protect victims of genuinely harmful communications as well as better protecting freedom of expression.

“I am delighted that the government has accepted these recommended offenses.”

In addition, new obligations will be placed on social media companies to remove the most harmful illegal content and criminal activity on their sites more quickly. These priority offenses include revenge porn, hate crime, fraud, the sale of illegal drugs or weapons, the promotion or facilitation of suicide, people smuggling and sexual exploitation. Terrorism and child sexual abuse were already categorized in this way. For these types of content, social media sites must take proactive action to prevent them from being viewed by users. This is instead of taking down content in response to user reports.

Dorries commented: “This government said it would legislate to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online while enshrining free speech, and that’s exactly what we are going to do. Our world-leading bill will protect children from online abuse and harms, protecting the most vulnerable from accessing harmful content and ensuring there is no safe space for terrorists to hide online.

“We are listening to MPs, charities and campaigners who have wanted us to strengthen the legislation, and today’s changes mean we will be able to bring the full weight of the law against those who use the internet as a weapon to ruin people’s lives and do so quicker and more effectively.”

European police have found and referred 563 pieces of terrorist content to service providers in the region, as a UK man was jailed for sharing a bomb-making manual online.

The Referral Action Day took place last week at Europol’s headquarters. The EU’s Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) coordinated the referral activity with specialized counter-terrorism units from France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

In particular, they were looking for content on “explosive chemical precursors” being shared online by terrorist-supporting networks, including jihadists. This refers to content such as bomb-making tutorials and information on carrying out terrorist attacks.

The content found on 106 websites and platforms will now be assessed by the relevant online service providers against their terms and conditions.

Last November, over 20 websites in Germany and the UK were suspended by service providers for disseminating online terrorist propaganda – fewer than half the number of sites originally flagged by police.

However, a new EU regulation will soon give the authorities the power to demand the removal of online terrorist content.

The news comes after a 19-year-old UK man was sentenced to 42 months in jail for sharing a bomb-making manual on social media.

Connor Burke, from southeast London, pleaded guilty at Woolwich Crown Court to disseminating a terrorist publication that contained information on how to create improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

He also pleaded guilty to four counts of possession of a document “likely to be useful” to a would-be terrorist.

“Burke had an unhealthy interest in extreme right-wing terrorist ideology, and this led to him sharing extremely dangerous material with others online,” argued Richard Smith, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command.

“Increasingly, we’re seeing young people being drawn into extremist ideologies, some of whom – like Burke – then go on to commit serious terrorism offenses.

Airport services giant Swissport is restoring its IT systems after a ransomware attack struck late last week, delaying flights.

The Zurich-headquartered firm operates everything from check-in gates and airport security to baggage handling, aircraft fuelling and de-icing and lounge hospitality. It claims to have provided ground services to 97 million passengers last year and handled over five million tons of air freight.

Swissport took to Twitter on Friday to warn its IT infrastructure had been hit by ransomware and apologize for any impact on service delivery.

However, a day later, the firm appeared to have things back under control.

“IT security incident at #Swissport contained,” it tweeted. “Affected infrastructure swiftly taken offline. Manual workarounds or fallback systems secured operation at all times. Full system clean-up and restoration now under way. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

It’s unclear exactly how severely the outage impacted its many clients around the globe. However, one report from German media revealed it led to temporary delays at Zurich airport.

“Due to system problems at our airport partner Swissport, 22 flights were delayed by three to 20 minutes yesterday,” a spokeswoman for the airport is quoted as saying.

The attackers are believed to have struck early in the morning of Thursday February 3. By Friday, there was no significant impact on operations at Zurich airport.

Backup procedures reportedly kicked in during the outage so that there was no impact on aircraft crews. However, a Swissport spokesperson reportedly admitted: “there may be delays in some cases.”

The news follows a series of attacks and disruptions at European ports and oil terminals over the past week, impacting fuel supply chains at a time of rising prices and heightened concern over the possible knock-on effect of Russia invading Ukraine.

“Whether the surge in attacks is related to current geopolitical events is unknown,” said Andy Norton, European cyber-risk officer at Armis.

“However, providers of critical services should immediately review the adequacy of their risk assessments, with emphasis on the criticality of ancillary IT systems that have increased connectivity, and the potential to impact OT and ICS production and service delivery.”