Mail & Guardian Newspaper Site Goes Offline

A hack into the very old and extremely popular news-website of South Africa namely Mail & Guardian Online has forced officials to disconnect it, according to mybroadband.co.za, which reported the news during the end-week of January 2011.

The attack, which occurred on January 25, 2011, involves a message to the website's visitors that apparently Christ Roper, Editor of Mail & Guardian Online posted. It states that the news company is handling the problem; however, for ensuring fully that visitors' safety doesn't get compromised, the site's service is being tentatively suspended. Although the step taken is drastic, the site doesn't wish risking visitors' safety and it regrets the service's interruption, the message explains. Softpedia.com published this during the end-week of January 2011.

Furthermore, the message states that the site will be once again put online soon after it's ensured that the anomaly no longer exists, adding that whenever there's more news, visitors will be updated.

Moreover, Nic Dawes Editor of Mail & Guardia tweeted that it was Russia from where the hack kicked off adding that the attack's objective was to thrust malware, scams etc. through the paper's Internet site that led to the disconnection. Threatpost.com published this on January 26, 2011.

Furthermore, Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley at Sophos the security company, while lauding the website's decision blogged that a website which had been suspended wasn't ever any fun for it; however, it was less painful as against regretting to the site's readers in case of a malware contamination on their computers. Companies intermittently faced unpleasant situations, but the vital thing was the way they reacted while being face-to-face with the crises. The decision towards taking the website offline couldn't have been simple; however, it sounded to be wise enough, Cluley added. Nakedsecurity.sophos.com published this on January 26, 2011.

Eventually, according to security specialists, with security companies now better equipped to detect and trace malevolent domains, organized criminals are increasingly focusing on hijacking authentic websites. Indeed, Websense, the Web-security company reveals that over 75% of websites supporting malicious programs during 2009 and 2010 were actually lawful sites rather than attack-sites that cyber-crooks created.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/8/2011