Journalists may handle sensitive sources, investigate cyber incidents, and face risks involving surveillance, phishing, and data exposure.
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Background for this topic.
Journalists gather, verify, and publish information, often handling unpublished documents, confidential source identities, and sensitive communications. Their security relevance is concentrated in protecting source confidentiality, editorial materials, accounts, and personal safety from targeted phishing, account takeover, device compromise, surveillance, or theft of stored data.
Useful controls include phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, prompt patching, encrypted communications and storage, strong separation between personal and reporting accounts, and careful handling of identifying metadata such as file histories and location data. Security planning should also cover source verification, secure transfer and deletion procedures, device and travel risks, and a response plan to revoke sessions, preserve evidence, assess exposed sources, and communicate through trusted channels after a suspected compromise.
Weekly headline count for the current query.
A Romanian national who led an online swatting ring that targeted more than 75 public officials, multiple journalists, and four religious institutions was sentenced to 4 years in federal prison. [...]
Russian state-sponsored hackers have been linked to an ongoing Signal and WhatsApp phishing campaign targeting government officials, military personnel, and journalists to gain access to sensitive messages. [...]
Meta has started rolling out a new WhatsApp lockdown-style security feature designed to protect journalists, public figures, and other high-risk individuals from sophisticated threats, including spyware attacks. [...]
Europol has confirmed that a Telegram channel impersonating the agency and offering a $50,000 reward for information on two Qilin ransomware administrators is fake. The impostor later admitted it was created to troll researchers and journalists. [...]
The Spanish police have arrested two individuals in the province of Las Palmas for their alleged involvement in cybercriminal activity, including data theft from the country's government. [...]
Email accounts of several Washington Post journalists were compromised in a cyberattack believed to have been carried out by a foreign government. [...]
Forensic investigation has confirmed the use of Paragon's Graphite spyware platform in zero-click attacks that targeted Apple iOS devices of at least two journalists in Europe. [...]
Since the start of the year, the Russian state-backed ColdRiver hacking group has been using new LostKeys malware to steal files in espionage attacks targeting Western governments, journalists, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations. [...]
The Serbian government exploited Qualcomm zero-days to unlock and infect Android devices with a new spyware named 'NoviSpy,' used to spy on activists, journalists, and protestors. [...]
The Iranian state-backed threat actor tracked as APT42 is employing social engineering attacks, including posing as journalists, to breach corporate networks and cloud environments of Western and Middle Eastern targets. [...]
The U.S. has imposed sanctions on two individuals and five entities linked to the development and distribution of the Predator commercial spyware used to target Americans, including government officials and journalists. [...]
A hacking group tracked as 'Pink Drainer' is impersonating journalists in phishing attacks to compromise Discord and Twitter accounts for cryptocurrency-stealing attacks. [...]
State-sponsored North Korean hacker group Kimsuky (a.ka. APT43) has been impersonating journalists and academics for spear-phishing campaigns to collect intelligence from think tanks, research centers, academic institutions, and various media organizations. [...]
The Israeli spyware vendor Candiru was found using a zero-day vulnerability in Google Chrome to spy on journalists and other high-interest individuals in the Middle East with the 'DevilsTongue' spyware. [...]
Researchers following the activities of advanced persistent (APT) threat groups originating from China, North Korea, Iran, and Turkey say that journalists and media organizations have remained a constant target for state-aligned actors. [...]
Apple announced that a new security feature known as Lockdown Mode will roll out with iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura to protect high-risk individuals like human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents against targeted spyware attacks. [...]
North Korean state-sponsored hackers known as APT37 have been discovered targeting journalists specializing in the DPRK with a novel malware strain. [...]
Digital threat researchers at Citizen Lab have discovered a new zero-click iMessage exploit used to install NSO Group spyware on devices belonging to Catalan politicians, journalists, and activists. [...]
Twitter account of former intelligence specialist, Reality Winner was hacked over the weekend by threat actors looking to target journalists at prominent media organizations. After taking over Winner's verified Twitter account, hackers changed the profile name to "Feedback Team" to impersonate Twitter staff and began sending out DMs. [...]
American media and publishing giant News Corp has disclosed today that it was the target of a "persistent" cyberattack. The attack discovered sometime this January, reportedly allowed threat actors to access emails and documents of some News Corp employees, including journalists. [...]