Publishing Giant Lee Enterprises has confirmed that cyberattacks on its systems are behind the ongoing disruption in dozens of newspapers and media across the United States.
In an email shared with customers sent on Friday seen by TechCrunch, Lee CEO Kevin Mowbray said he was working on “full recovery of the system” following a cyber attack earlier in the week .
Lee Enterprises spokesperson Tracy Rouch said the outage was caused by a “cybersecurity event” and “focusing on determining which information may have been affected by the situation at the moment. I have confirmed with TechCrunch that it is.
The spokesman refused to say whether he received communication from the hackers or whether there was a timeline for recovery. The company does not say whether there are technical measures such as logs to determine whether information has been accessed or stolen.
Lee did not explain the nature of the cyberattacks, nor did the company comment beyond email.
Lee is one of the largest newspaper publishers in the United States and offers publishing technology and website services to 72 publications, including the St. Louis Post Dispatch, which broke story news on Friday.
Postdispatch also didn’t miss publication date, but said most of the newspaper editions this week were affected. Some newspapers were small in a few days, Post-Dispatch said.
Several other news outlets reported being affected by Lee’s cyberattacks, including the Casper Star Tribune in Wyoming. In a news article on the website, Star Tribune said: “Many of Lee’s newspapers were initially unable to build and publish pages, but the company is working to print and get back the issue,” the newspaper’s website said. This may temporarily affect your access to your subscription account.”
According to a February 3 email sent to all Lee employees seen by TechCrunch, Lee said that one of the data centers that host applications and services used by Lee employees and media is the one that hosts subscriber services. Reported offline including the system.
Emails sent to Lee Employees to Lee employees can be found in other core systems, including call center applications, some phone lines, and VPNs for remote employees, and single sign-on for access to applications. He said he was not accessible.
The suspension has not yet been resolved as of Monday. Lee did not make Ciso Rob Hoffpauir available for interviews.
Lee Enterprises released its latest quarterly profit this week, reporting revenue of $144.6 million for the first quarter (down 7% year-on-year), but it did not mention suspensions or cyberattacks.
This is Lee’s second known cyber attack in the last five years. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021 that Iranian hackers had breached Lee’s content management system as part of a campaign aimed at spreading disinformation ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Do you know more about Lee Enterprises cyberattacks? Please contact Zack Whittaker safely via the +1 signal at 646-755-8849 and WhatsApp. You can also securely share documents with TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
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