Norwegian newspaper hit by 'serious' cyberattack
Newspaper Dagbladet was closed for several hours on Thursday in what has been described as a “serious” infringement of its online security.
Dagbladet’s website went offline for several hours after an offensive article about Prime Minister Erna Solberg was posted on its homepage.
Aller Media, which owns the newspaper, closed access to the site along with its other media: Se og Hør, Dinside, KK and SOL.
The company suspects a hacker attack and has reported an IP address to police, it stated in an article published by Dagbladet shortly after the site came back online.
The website was switched back on around 9:15pm after an outage of approximately three hours.
Several articles which were published on Thursday afternoon were changed to include offensive content, Dagbladet writes.
In one such article, a story about car break-in was changed to attribute offensive quotes about paedophilia to Solberg.
The incident was initially reported by Medier24.
«Pedofili er greit så lenge man ikke får sæd på barnet», skrev Dagbladet. Nå har de slettet innholdet
https://t.co/QfoGHy2bVl
— Medier24 (@Medier24) October 17, 2019
“This is a serious incident,” Aller Media CEO Dag Sørsdahl said in Dagbladet’s subsequent article.
“We think we have identified the problem and have no reason to believe there is any more unwanted content on our sites,” Sørsdahl added.
The company is in contact with the Norwegian National Security Authority (Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet, NSM) over the incident.
“We suspect a hacker attack. Content not made by us was published on our editorial pages. So we decided to close a number of our sites for several hours,” Sørsdahl said.
The CEO added that the company was working to improve online security.
“We launched additional security measures this week. Not all of the security measures have been initiated and it remains to be seen whether that would have prevented what happened today,” he said.
READ ALSO: Norway targeted by Anonymous over whaling
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Dagbladet’s website went offline for several hours after an offensive article about Prime Minister Erna Solberg was posted on its homepage.
Aller Media, which owns the newspaper, closed access to the site along with its other media: Se og Hør, Dinside, KK and SOL.
The company suspects a hacker attack and has reported an IP address to police, it stated in an article published by Dagbladet shortly after the site came back online.
The website was switched back on around 9:15pm after an outage of approximately three hours.
Several articles which were published on Thursday afternoon were changed to include offensive content, Dagbladet writes.
In one such article, a story about car break-in was changed to attribute offensive quotes about paedophilia to Solberg.
The incident was initially reported by Medier24.
«Pedofili er greit så lenge man ikke får sæd på barnet», skrev Dagbladet. Nå har de slettet innholdet
— Medier24 (@Medier24) October 17, 2019
https://t.co/QfoGHy2bVl
“This is a serious incident,” Aller Media CEO Dag Sørsdahl said in Dagbladet’s subsequent article.
“We think we have identified the problem and have no reason to believe there is any more unwanted content on our sites,” Sørsdahl added.
The company is in contact with the Norwegian National Security Authority (Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet, NSM) over the incident.
“We suspect a hacker attack. Content not made by us was published on our editorial pages. So we decided to close a number of our sites for several hours,” Sørsdahl said.
The CEO added that the company was working to improve online security.
“We launched additional security measures this week. Not all of the security measures have been initiated and it remains to be seen whether that would have prevented what happened today,” he said.
READ ALSO: Norway targeted by Anonymous over whaling
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