Friday, May 03, 2019

Cyberattack destroyed archives and classifieds for New York newspaper chain; see tips on how to defend against hackers

A small newspaper chain in upstate New York was hit by a cyberattack last weekend that destroyed digital archives and crippled the classified ad publishing system for three dailies.

"Servers targeted by criminals over the weekend were encrypted by a virus that spread quickly throughout Johnson Newspaper Corp., affecting servers used for internal sharing of content used to produce newspapers in Watertown, Hudson and Massena," Alec Johnson reports for the Watertown Daily Times. "Servers that host the newspaper website, subscriptions and email were not affected, according to an analysis by company information technology professionals."

The printing servers for the Times, the Hudson Register-Star, and the Courier Observer in Massena and Potsdam have been repaired, and classifieds are expected to be back online by the end of the week, Johnson reports.

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