New media, new threats: hackers

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on May 22, 2007 at 12:50 PM

The Telegraph group’s website came under the fire of hackers yesterday, and was out for most of the day. As newspapers continue to grow online, they must also expand their set of preventive tools.

The DoS attacks “flooded” the server, by sending thousands of multiple requests simultaneously.

"National newspapers are particularly high-profile targets, particularly if they publish a story that someone doesn't like," said Paul Vlissidis, the technical director at security specialists NCC Group.

The Estonian government also revealed that its Internet services had been recently paralyzed by a nation-wide attack.

Not to make newspapers paranoid about hacker attacks, but news websites should ensure their content is backed up and that their server has proper defenses – as well as a reactive IT team if needed.

The Telegraph’s blogs and My Telegraph service were unaffected, as they ran on another server.

Source: Media Guardian