Local newspapers published a story which was apparently the work of foreign attackers.
Local and regional newspapers were defaced over the weekend after attackers were able to publish a purported breaking news story on the websites of titles owned by Newsquest Media Group.
According to The Record, the group published a breaking news story titled “PERVOKLASSNIY RUSSIAN HACKERS ATTACK” across several websites, suggesting they use a shared content management system.
An archived version of the East Lothian Courier showed the claimed name of the group in capital letters, a logo, and a byline attributed to “Дэниел Хопкинс” in the Cyrillic alphabet, or “Daniel Hopkins” in English.
The news article did not appear to contain any text.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
