Over 4 / 5 of the world's leading media organizations have been targeting attacks hacker behind which government agencies are allegedly hiding, according to a study two engineers security of Google.
Shane Hadley and Morgan Marquis Bouar presented the results of their work at the Black Hat Asia 2014 conference in Singapore. As shown by research, journalists are a very frequent target of government hackers.
In particular, 21 from 25 leading news organizations in the world seems to have been targeted. Attacks came from hackers who either worked for governments or supported them.
"If you are a journalist or journalistic organization, we will see state targeting, and we see it happening regardless of region, all over the world, where the targets are and where they come from," Hadley told Reuters.
The two researchers they didn't reveal details about how Google monitors these activities, but noted that the company "monitors government agencies that attack its users."
Various US news outlets have reported attacks on them over the past year, and Forbes, the Financial Times and the NY Times have all been attacked by the "Syrian Electronic Army", which supports President Assad's regime. Also, Hadley added that Chinese hackers recently gained access to a major Western news organization, which he did not name, through a fake questionnaire sent to staff.
According to Markis Bouar, although these attacks are not new, research shows that attacks against journalists and journalists that are not mentioned are much more than those that are known. As noted, these organizations seem to be slower than other firms to take action to address the phenomenon. "Many news organizations are now waking up," he added, adding that smaller media, journalists and bloggers are also targeting.
