Newsweek hit with cyberattack after posting Trump Cuba story
Newsweek is suggesting a digital attack that knocked down its website Thursday night may have been designed to thwart a story about Donald Trump.
“Last night we were on the receiving end of what our IT chief called a ‘massive’ DoS (denial of service) attack. The site was down for hours at a time when Kurt Eichenwald’s story detailing how Donald Trump’s company broke the law by violating the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, was being covered extensively by prominent cable news programs,” said editor-in-chief Jim Impoco in a statement.
{mosads}”As with any DDoS attack, there are lots of IP addresses, but the main ones are Russian, though that in itself does not prove anything. We are still investigating,” Impoco added.
Most DDoS attacks use networks hijacked computers or internet connected devices, whose owners are unaware they are being used in attacks. It is difficult to draw any conclusions from the IP addresses.
Intelligence officials believe Russia was responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), a breach that some experts argue was intended to help Trump.
Denial of service attacks flood servers with so much traffic that they can no longer properly function. They are nearly always launched from vast networks of computers and often called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to reflect that.
Eichenwald’s story alleged that Trump Hotels sent an emissary to Cuba to investigate business deals in 1998, while then-President Bill Clinton was considering softening the embargo. This would have violated the embargo, which was still active.
“Thank you. That was a nasty DDoS attack last night. Someone must have objected to our sports coverage,” tweeted Impoco on Friday.
The website and story are now both online.
– Updated at 2:30 p.m.
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