British "The Guardian" victim of a cyber attack (Dec, 20, 2022)

[German]The British newspaper "The Guardian" has fallen victim to a cyberattack. The publisher suspects a ransomware attack, but is probably still able to continue its work and produce the paper online. Employees are being asked to work from the home office.

According to this article from The Guardian, the incident began late Tuesday night (Dec. 20, 2022) and affected parts of the company's technical infrastructure. The company's services then also experienced interruptions. Employees were therefore instructed to work from home.

The Guardian classifies the IT incident as serious and suspects a ransomware attack. The online publication was largely unaffected as articles continued to be written and published on the Guardian website and app. The Guardian says it is confident that the printed newspaper can be produced on Thursday.

Guardian Media Group managing director Anna Bateson and editor-in-chief Katharine Viner briefed staff:

As everyone is aware, there has been a serious incident in the last 24 hours that has affected our IT network and systems. We are assuming that this is a ransomware attack, but are continuing to investigate all possibilities.

Although some of our internal systems have been affected, we are confident that we will be able to publish our newspaper again tomorrow. Our technology teams are working to manage all aspects of this incident, with the vast majority of our employees able to work from home as they did during the pandemic.

We will continue to keep our employees and anyone else affected informed. At the end of the day, we will bring everyone back up to speed. With a few exceptions, we are asking everyone to work from home for the remainder of the week unless we inform you otherwise.

Thank you to everyone who worked hard during this incident to keep our newspaper running, to serve our readers, supporters and advertisers, and to keep our core systems available to colleagues.

It is currently unclear whether customer and employee data was siphoned off by the attackers.

Addendum: In this supplementary article, the Guardian confirms that employee data was siphoned off in the ransomware infection. Phishing is suspected to be the infection vector.