The Mail&Guardian (M&G) Web site was forced to go offline yesterday, after a sustained attack from Russian hackers.
Editor Nic Dawes confirmed that hackers had targeted the portal for over a week, and the news site was temporarily shut down yesterday in order to protect its users.
Dawes explains that the potential threat to users included phishing, spam and malware. “Essentially they were trying to run the full gamut of cyber-crime on our Web site.
“Let me put it this way: it was like finding that someone has broken into your tool shed, and hidden a crowbar under a bush.
“A short while later you find that they've subtly opened the window of your pantry. Then, next thing you know, you wake up and go into your kitchen for breakfast only to find them sitting at your table, eating your food, with your entire family tied up.”
Dawes explains that M&G quarantined the site and cleaned up crucial code in order to get the site back up early this morning.
Twitter feeds were abuzz with updates from the M&G team. Digital platforms manager Alistair Fairweather tweeted last night: “We're close to being live again folks - hold thumbs for the @mailandguardian and our war against zee Russians (who are still rushin' around).”
Team effort
“There was an amazing response from the community. I really wasn't expecting the site to be up and running again until at least this afternoon,” says Dawes.
The site had to be stripped back to basics, and Dawes says there may be some hiccups over the next few days. “We expect some database issues, such as images and pages loading incorrectly, and the site will be running a bit slower than usual.”
Responding as to why the M&G site was targeted by the hackers, Dawes notes: “There are a number of highly-talented programmers working for Russian syndicates and, since M&G is a reasonably big site with quite a lot of traffic, they detected that there were vulnerabilities to exploit.
“We are confident that we have now secured the site, but obviously we will have to continue to be vigilant.”
Share