Security News > 2023 > February > News Corp says state hackers were on its network for two years
Mass media and publishing giant News Corporation says that attackers behind a breach disclosed in 2022 first gained access to its systems two years before, in February 2020.
This was revealed in data breach notification letters sent to employees affected by the data breach, who had some of their personal and health information accessed, while the threat actors had access to an email and document storage system used by several News Corp businesses.
The incident affected multiple news arms of the publishing conglomerate, including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and its U.K. news operations.
"Based on the investigation, News Corp understands that, between February 2020 and January 2022, an unauthorized party gained access to certain business documents and emails from a limited number of its personnel's accounts in the affected system, some of which contained personal information," the company said.
The media giant said last year, when it first disclosed this security breach, that the attackers are associated with a "Foreign government," and they exfiltrated some data during the time they had access to its systems.
"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," David Wong, VP of incident response at Mandiant, told BleepingComputer at the time.