Incident Response, TDR

Google researchers shed light on state-sponsored attacks targeting news orgs

At the Black Hat hacking conference in Singapore, security engineers at Google pointed out the high incidence with which state-sponsored attacks targeted major news organizations.

On Friday, Shane Huntley and Morgan Marquis-Boire at Google, told Reuters that 21 of the world's top 25 media companies were on the receiving end of these attacks aimed at journalists.The duo presented on the topic this week at a session called, "Tomorrow's News is Today's Intel: Journalists as Targets and Compromise Vectors."

“If you're a journalist or a journalist organization, we will see state-sponsored targeting and we see it happening regardless of region…,” Huntley told Reuters.

The state-sponsored threats, often leveraged via malicious emails, were reportedly tracked via Google's monitoring of attacks on users.

On Friday, SCMagazine.com reached out to Marquis-Boire and Huntley, but not immediately receive comment.

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