Several News Corp publications suffered “persistent” Cyberattacks in early 2020, which the Murdoch owned company claims was linked to the Chinese government, the company told employees in an email on Friday.
News Corp said the attacks targeted The Wall Street Journal, WSJ parent company Dow Jones, The New York Post, News Corp headquarters, and News Corp operations in the United Kingdom. The attacks involved individual email accounts and shared documents on Google Drive. The company has not disclosed how many people were affected by the attack.
According to WSJ, though the attacks occurred almost 2 years ago, they were only discovered in Jan. 20, 2022. In the just two weeks since the attacks were discovered, News Corp says that an investigation conducted by cybersecurity firm Mandiant Inc determined there were links to china.
“Mandiant assesses that those behind this activity have a China nexus, and we believe they are likely involved in espionage activities to collect intelligence to benefit China’s interests,” Mandiant’s David Wong told WSJ.
Despite this apparent certainly, according to CNN, it still isn’t clear what information was obtained during the attacks, and the company is still investigating the extent of the breach.
The company has also notified the FBI of the attacks. The Chinese embassy has of course denied any link to the attacks.