Two of the largest newspapers in the country have suffered a malware attack which severely affected computer systems and caused delays. The Los Angeles Times and Tribune newspapers operate one of the biggest news outlets in the country. The company says their technology teams worked quickly to contain the malware attack but it eventually still managed to spread through the company’s network.
The virus spread through the Tribune’s publishing network and infected systems used in news production and the printing process. As a result, multiple newspapers around the country were also affected since they share this particular platform. The malware attack delayed newspaper production and halted some distributions.
The company eventually traced the virus’s origin outside of the United States. It is still unclear who actually initiated the attack as more investigation is being done.
“We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more specifically servers, as opposed to looking to steal information,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. The source would not detail what evidence led the company to believe the breach came from overseas.
Tribune Publishing has said that no personal data was compromised in the attack. So subscribers, users, and advertisers should rest easy in that regard.
“Every market across the company was impacted,” said Marisa Kollias, spokeswoman for Tribune Publishing. She declined to provide specifics on the disruptions, but the company’s properties include the Chicago Tribune; Baltimore Sun; Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md.; Hartford Courant; New York Daily News; South Florida Sun Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel.
For now, it looks like the company has contained the malware attack and they are back in operation but warn there will be some delays until everything is caught up.
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[button link=”https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-times-delivery-disruption-20181229-story.html” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: L.A. Times[/button]Last Updated on February 3, 2021.
