NewsCorp unfazed an Intrusion

Online work accounts of News Corporation journalists were broken into by snoops seemingly with ties to China.

Rupert Murdoch’s empire announced the security breach, describing it as a “persistent cyber-attack,” and saying it had hired Mandiant to figure out what happened. It is believed the intruders were seeking messages, files and other internal informations.

The intrusion was discovered on January 20, the corporation’s flagship British newspaper The Times reported this afternoon. The cyber-attack included the targeting of emails and documents of some employees, including journalists.

Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal also said it was targeted along with its stablemate the New York Post and other publications.

Mandiant assesses that those behind this activity have a China nexus, and we believe they are likely involved in espionage activities to collect intelligence to benefit China’s interests.

No further detail on whether the intrusions were state-sponsored, state-directed, or merely originated from Chinese servers was given by News Corp. Neither was any detail given on whether the attacks defeated security protections on a cloud provider’s servers or whether luckless journalists had their work or personal devices or accounts individually compromised, giving the attackers direct access to email and file-hosting accounts