The breach was described as being much more serious that just an intrusion of low grade, disclosed last week by Dow Jones, which is a unit of News Corp the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Advertisement
The hackers were seeking sensitive information that included stories being prepared for publication, Bloomberg reported.
Dow Jones says it has received no information on any such allegations, but it is looking into the report.
Kelly Langmesser, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation New York office, confirmed the office is investigating a breach at Dow Jones but declined to comment further.
A team of Russian hackers has allegedly penetrated servers of Dow Jones for trading tips. Federal authorities, including the FBI, have been investigating the case since 2014, said one of the anonymous sources. There’s a bit of a twist to the story, however: Dow Jones is strongly denying the Bloomberg report. These kinds of intrusions can be pre-meditated – hackers are paid in advance by traders in order to gain access to certain types of data. Dow Jones Newswires publishes more than 16,000 news items each day to financial professionals and investors. Whether the two hacks are related to each other is not known.
“We are looking into whether there is any truth whatsoever to this report by a competitor news organization”, Dow Jones said.
Earlier this year, US authorities accused several individuals of hacking into the servers of news wire companies over a five-year period. Of the sought data was reportedly news articles in the pipeline for publication.
Dow Jones had stated that there was unauthorized entry to its methods at sure occasions between August 2012 and July 2015.
Advertisement
The Securities and Exchange Commission did not respond to a request for comment. At that time, the company was quoted as saying that it is working closely with a cybersecurity firm and law enforcement officials to get to the bottom of the hack, which had compromised the personal information of approximately 3,500 customers.
