Breach, Data Security

Eurekalert news service attacked

Scientific news source, EurekAlert, which hosts embargoed scientific journals has announced that it has suffered a data breach which has seen the login details of its users stolen.

An email announcement from the company reads, “as you know, an aggressive September 9 attack on the EurekAlert! website compromised registrants' usernames and passwords, and resulted in the premature release of two embargoed news releases. The integrity of EurekAlert!'s content and infrastructure remains our primary concern at AAAS.”

Operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), EurekAlert holds science-related releases and papers from hundreds of institutions such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, both of which are popular publishers of clinical drug trials.

The service was taken offline for a short period after the attack on September 9th, according to the AAAS, the company investigated and swiftly brought the service back online yesterday, slowly restoring usual service.

The company claimed it was taken offline offline to protect the embargoed content the systems contain.

Taking steps to ensure no such further attacks happen, the company continued, “we have rebuilt the EurekAlert! system environment and will continue to put it through intensive cyber-security testing until we are confident that it meets the high level of security and integrity that you have come to expect from EurekAlert!. After the site is re-launched, all registrants will be prompted to create a new password that meets modern standards for password complexity. We are currently optimistic that all of this can be achieved by the weekend.”

Concluding, the company said, “we deeply regret the inconvenience that this hack has caused, and we are taking deliberate steps to restore and strengthen the system.”

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