Malware attack delayed the publishing of major US newspapers

As per the Times, a suspected malware attack affected the distribution of Saturday’s San Diego Union-Tribuneand the Los Angeles Times, two of the major newspapers in the US. Initially, the publishing company thought that it was a server outage but it turned out to be originated from an outside entity. However, much information hasn’t been revealed about the origin of the attack or how they concurred that it came from overseas.

"We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more specifically servers, as opposed to trying to steal information," a spokesperson informed the Times.

The attack disrupted the print production systems which led to the delay in the delivery of some of the newspapers. The attack also affected Tribune Publishing properties, the ex-owner of San Diego Union-Tribuneand the Los Angeles Times. Now,these are owned by biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong.

There are speculations about the attack intending to steal personal information. However, until now there is no proof that customer credit card information or any other personal information has been compromised. The Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Katie Waldman mentioned in a statement that the organization is aware of the potential cyber incident affecting several news outlets and the expert teamis working to analyze and improve the situations.