The Moscow branch of The New York Times was targeted in an attempted cyber attack, the newspaper has announced.
So far, however, there is no evidence that the hackers—thought to be working on behalf of Russian intelligence agencies —succeeded in accessing NYT’s systems, according to the newspaper's statement.
“We are constantly monitoring our systems with the latest available intelligence and tools,” said Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times. “We have seen no evidence that any of our internal systems, including our systems in the Moscow bureau, have been breached or compromised.”
According to CNN the hackers targeted reporters at the NYT and other publications over recent months. The FBI is now investigating the attacks and believe they were carried out by Russian hackers, or hackers working on behalf of Russian intelligence agencies. The motive behind the attack is not yet clear, nor is how many reporters were targeted.
This latest incident joins a long list of hacks thought to have been carried out by Russian intelligence agencies. CNN said this attack is part of, “a wave of cyber attacks, including against think-tanks in Washington, to gather intelligence from a broad array of non-governmental organizations with windows into the US political system.”
ABC News, meanwhile, said that the NYT attack was “probably” carried out by the same group that recently hit the Democratic National Committee (DNC), accessing information the organization had gathered on opposition presidential candidate Donald Trump. Also leaked were damaging emails which showed Democratic officials favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the race for the DNC presidential nomination.
The emails were released by WikiLeaks, although the whistleblowing website refused to say whether Russia had provided the emails. US officials said there was “strong evidence” that Russia was behind the DNC hack, according to CNN.
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