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Journalists gather, verify, and publish information, often handling unpublished documents, confidential source identities, and sensitive communications.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.
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new China-aligned espionage campaign targeting government and defense sectors across South, East, and Southeast Asia, along with one European government belonging to NATO
An apparent hack-for-hire campaign likely orchestrated by a threat actor with suspected ties to the Indian government targeted journalists, activists, and government officials across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), according to findings from Access Now, Lookout, and SMEX
Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (aka Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV) and Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) have issued a joint advisory warning of a malicious cyber campaign undertaken by a likely state-sponsored threat actor that involves carrying out phishing attacks over the Signal messaging app
Meta on Tuesday announced it's adding Strict Account Settings on WhatsApp to secure certain users against advanced cyber attacks because of who they are and what they do
An Iranian state-sponsored hacking group associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been linked to a spear-phishing campaign targeting journalists, high-profile cyber security experts, and computer science professors in Israel
Apple has disclosed that a now-patched security flaw present in its Messages app was actively exploited in the wild to target civil society members in sophisticated cyber attacks
Meta-owned WhatsApp on Friday said it disrupted a campaign that involved the use of spyware to target journalists and civil society members
A Serbian journalist had his phone first unlocked by a Cellebrite tool and subsequently compromised by a previously undocumented spyware codenamed NoviSpy, according to a new report published by Amnesty International
Russian security vendor Kaspersky has said it's exiting the U.S. market nearly a month after the Commerce Department announced a ban on the sale of its software in the country citing a national security risk
The Iranian state-backed hacking outfit called APT42 is making use of enhanced social engineering schemes to infiltrate target networks and cloud environments
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday unsealed indictments against seven Chinese nationals for their involvement in a hacking group that targeted U.S. and foreign critics, journalists, businesses, and political officials for about 14 years
The U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two individuals and five entities associated with the Intellexa Alliance for their role in “developing, operating, and distributing” commercial spyware designed to target government officials, journalists, and policy experts in the country
The iPhones belonging to nearly three dozen journalists, activists, human rights lawyers, and civil society members in Jordan have been targeted with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, according to joint findings from Access Now and the Citizen Lab
High-profile individuals working on Middle Eastern affairs at universities and research organizations in Belgium, France, Gaza, Israel, the U.K., and the U.S. have been targeted by an Iranian cyber espionage group called Mind Sandstorm since November 2023
The iPhone belonging to Galina Timchenko, a prominent Russian journalist and critic of the government, was compromised with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, a new collaborative investigation from Access Now and the Citizen Lab has revealed
Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has warned of cyber attacks targeting Iranian persons and organizations in the country since the end of 2022
Threat actors using hacking tools from an Israeli surveillanceware vendor named QuaDream targeted at least five members of civil society in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East
Suspected North Korean nation-state actors targeted a journalist in South Korea with a malware-laced Android app as part of a social engineering campaign
The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on Thursday warned of spear-phishing attacks mounted by Russian and Iranian state-sponsored actors for information-gathering operations
Hackers with ties to the Iranian government have been linked to an ongoing social engineering and credential phishing campaign directed against human rights activists, journalists, researchers, academics, diplomats, and politicians working in the Middle East