Infosecurity Magazine, one of the major news sources for cybersecurity events is now suffering from a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The United Kingdom-based publication confirmed this via a post on its Facebook page that reads as follows:
Due to our website being under a significant and sustained DDoS attack, we have temporarily suspended the Infosecurity website, and are actively in the process of migrating to a new, more robust hosting provider. We are aiming to complete this move as quickly as circumstance allows. Sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.
We will be back to providing you with all the information security news, insight and training we love to deliver as soon as possible.
Infosecurity Magazine is one of the websites that I, as a cybersecurity journalist, frequent for updates in the InfoSec world. They do fine work, and it is incredibly unfortunate that they are experiencing this issue. The writers there do extensive, fact-based reporting, and I know that this must be devastating for them. I write in the first person because no other outlets appear to be writing about this; therefore, most of the information in this article will be anecdotal.
I first noticed something to be slightly off with the Infosecurity Magazine website around the beginning of last week. Articles had not been posted since early-to-mid July, which was the first red flag. The second was that whenever I tried to access the website later, Cloudflare would intercept my request. This happens occasionally as I use a VPN, but even when I turned it off, the interceptions persisted. Eventually, there was a notice similar to the one that appeared on Infosecurity Magazine’s Facebook page.
At the moment, no other information as to where the DDoS is occurring or who is behind it is available. As a short-term solution, Infosecurity Magazine has started uploading podcasts to Soundcloud. They announced this via the following tweet:
This event is a reminder that even journalists are in the crosshairs of cybercriminals. Simply writing about their activities is enough to draw their ire.
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