The New York Times Web site is down for the second time this month, and this time the paper says it's likely from a "malicious external attack." August 27, 2013 2:19 PM PDT The New York Times Web site went down Tuesday afternoon, after what the paper's spokeswoman called a "malicious external attack." Readers who tried to access the site started seeing error messages as earlier as 12 p.m. PT, according to Bloomberg. This is the second time this month the site has had an outage. About two weeks ago, the site experienced the same problem, but the Times said then that it was an internal issue despite reports of a cyber attack. The Time's VP of corporate communications Eileen Murphy tweeted that Tuesday's outage was "most likely result of malicious external attack." According to a tweet noted by TechCrunch, it appears the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) hackers group is responsible for the attack. Reports say SEA is also responsible for a concurrent attack on Twitter. In the past, the SEA has claimed responsibility for hacking several media Twitter accounts, including Reuters and the Onion. The Wall Street Journal dropped its paywall temporarily, letting users read its articles, including its coverage on the Times' outage, without a subscription. The Times continues to publish the news by routing users to a stripped down version of the site, according to the Journal. We've contacted the Times for more information and we'll update when we hear back. Update, 2:34 p.m. PT: Adds more information.
The New York Times Web site is down for the second time this month, and this time the paper says it's likely from a "malicious external attack."
The New York Times Web site went down Tuesday afternoon, after what the paper's spokeswoman called a "malicious external attack."
Readers who tried to access the site started seeing error messages as earlier as 12 p.m. PT, according to Bloomberg. This is the second time this month the site has had an outage. About two weeks ago, the site experienced the same problem, but the Times said then that it was an internal issue despite reports of a cyber attack.
The Time's VP of corporate communications Eileen Murphy tweeted that Tuesday's outage was "most likely result of malicious external attack."
According to a tweet noted by TechCrunch, it appears the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) hackers group is responsible for the attack. Reports say SEA is also responsible for a concurrent attack on Twitter.
In the past, the SEA has claimed responsibility for hacking several media Twitter accounts, including Reuters and the Onion.
The Wall Street Journal dropped its paywall temporarily, letting users read its articles, including its coverage on the Times' outage, without a subscription. The Times continues to publish the news by routing users to a stripped down version of the site, according to the Journal.
We've contacted the Times for more information and we'll update when we hear back.
Update, 2:34 p.m. PT: Adds more information.
