5 ms·

This story is so bizarre. Despite the article being 20+ paragraphs, there are hardly any details. It lists a handful of newspapers spread across the country and

This story is so bizarre. Despite the article being 20+ paragraphs, there are hardly any details. It lists a handful of newspapers spread across the country and just says they were delayed. Could it be any more vague? The most concrete detail provided is that the attack "disrupted a shared production platform" that apparently made it hard for the printing presses to work - but what does that mean? Disrupted how? What was the shared platform? Was it targeted at multiple newspapers, or was this an attack on a single platform that just happens to be used by all of these newspapers? Then, in regards to the origin of the attack, the only detail provided is this single line: > The source identified the attacker only as a “foreign entity.” That's it. There is absolutely no other information given about the origin of the attack. And yet it's in the story headline? Talk about fear mongering. They also either didn't report, or even more confusing, don't know if the attack was reported to the FBI. And just to make it even more bizarre, this entire article is written by LA Times staff and posted on the LA Times website, and then talks about the LA Times (one of the affected newspapers) as if they have no idea how the LA Times was affected. Shouldn't they have a lot more information? Overall, this article seems to be written by someone who has very little information about the incident(s), and very little knowledge about technology. It also reeks of knee-jerk "omfg hackers!1!". In reality, based on the few details that are available, it sounds to me like they just got hit by some boring ransomware virus. It likely wasn't even targeted.

crocodiletears 8y ago
I too, am leery of accepting this incident as a deliberate attack. The Chicago Tribune wrote a less hyperbolic article, indicating that they were forced to print a stripped down version of their paper[0]. An NBC reporter reached out to Tribune for comment, which seems to shed more light on the nature of the problem. [1] >The computer malware was detected Friday and “impacted some back-office systems which are primarily used to publish and produce newspapers across our properties,” said Marisa Kollias, Tribune communications vice president, in a statement. At this point I don't see any reason to believe that a copy formatter (I don't know the industry term) didn't just happen to be looking at porn during their break, and accidentally clicked the wrong link. The LATime's treatment of the event is lazy and, I suspect, quite misleading. [0]https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-computer-virus-tribune-publishing-20181229-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-computer-viru... [1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/computer-virus-hits-southern-california-newspapers-n953001 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/computer-virus-hits-sou...
zrm 8y ago
> The most concrete detail provided is that the attack "disrupted a shared production platform" that apparently made it hard for the printing presses to work - but what does that mean? Disrupted how? What was the shared platform? Was it targeted at multiple newspapers, or was this an attack on a single platform that just happens to be used by all of these newspapers? A "production platform" in the context of a newspaper means the systems used to produce the newspaper. This can be anything from laying out pages and editing stories to making plates for the press. (This is not a great thing to get pwned because it's not implausible for it to contain unpublished stories or confidential source material.) > All papers within The Times’ former parent company, Tribune Publishing, experienced glitches with the production of papers. Tribune Publishing sold The Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune to Los Angeles businessman Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong in June, but the companies continue to share various systems, including software. So this sounds like an internal Tribune problem that also affected some of their former papers that still use their systems, including the LA Times. > It also stymied distribution of the West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, which are all printed at the Los Angeles Times’ Olympic printing plant in downtown Los Angeles. Apparently the WSJ and NYT contract out some of their printing to the LA Times, and since the LA Times' (i.e. Tribune's) production system was down, they couldn't do the contract printing either. This part is funny: > “We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more specifically servers, as opposed to looking to steal information,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. It sounds like they asked one of their IT staff what happened (or maybe one at Tribune) and got an off-the-record answer because IT isn't allowed to "talk to the press" even when they work for a newspaper. Then they published it before corporate PR finished deciding what to tell them because deadlines don't wait for PR departments.
- Kalium 8y ago
  > Then they published it before corporate PR finished deciding what to tell them because deadlines don't wait for PR departments. It is kind of funny to see this happen under one roof, though...
sodosopa 8y ago
Why would they give more information? It's an active crime scene.
reaperducer 8y ago
What was the shared platform? Was it targeted at multiple newspapers, or was this an attack on a single platform that just happens to be used by all of these newspapers? At one time all of these newspapers were owned by The Tribune Company in Chicago. Most still are. During the time they were one company, they operated off of a central publishing platform. When’s few of the newspapers were sold, they remained part of that platform. “Platform” is a word used in a different sense than in the tech industry. At the production level, news organizations do not operate with Microsoft Word and Adobe Illustrator and other common software. They use specialized software that is tailor made for the industry, and sometimes for the individual organization. Companies from the AP to Sony and a bunch you’ve probably never heard of make these massive pieces of software that tie together news production computers with printing pressed, massive digital media archives, and dozens, if not hundreds, of different types of machines. If you read the article more closely, you will see the specific type of ransomware that is believed to be used in this attack, and why this is believed to be the cause of the disruption. As for all the secrecy, sadly that is par for the course in the media industry, and doubly so for what is now Tribune Publishing.

crocodiletears 8y ago

I too, am leery of accepting this incident as a deliberate attack. The Chicago Tribune wrote a less hyperbolic article, indicating that they were forced to print a stripped down version of their paper[0]. An NBC reporter reached out to Tribune for comment, which seems to shed more light on the nature of the problem. [1] >The computer malware was detected Friday and “impacted some back-office systems which are primarily used to publish and produce newspapers across our properties,” said Marisa Kollias, Tribune communications vice president, in a statement. At this point I don't see any reason to believe that a copy formatter (I don't know the industry term) didn't just happen to be looking at porn during their break, and accidentally clicked the wrong link. The LATime's treatment of the event is lazy and, I suspect, quite misleading. [0]https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-computer-virus-tribune-publishing-20181229-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-computer-viru... [1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/computer-virus-hits-southern-california-newspapers-n953001 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/computer-virus-hits-sou...

zrm 8y ago

> The most concrete detail provided is that the attack "disrupted a shared production platform" that apparently made it hard for the printing presses to work - but what does that mean? Disrupted how? What was the shared platform? Was it targeted at multiple newspapers, or was this an attack on a single platform that just happens to be used by all of these newspapers? A "production platform" in the context of a newspaper means the systems used to produce the newspaper. This can be anything from laying out pages and editing stories to making plates for the press. (This is not a great thing to get pwned because it's not implausible for it to contain unpublished stories or confidential source material.) > All papers within The Times’ former parent company, Tribune Publishing, experienced glitches with the production of papers. Tribune Publishing sold The Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune to Los Angeles businessman Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong in June, but the companies continue to share various systems, including software. So this sounds like an internal Tribune problem that also affected some of their former papers that still use their systems, including the LA Times. > It also stymied distribution of the West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, which are all printed at the Los Angeles Times’ Olympic printing plant in downtown Los Angeles. Apparently the WSJ and NYT contract out some of their printing to the LA Times, and since the LA Times' (i.e. Tribune's) production system was down, they couldn't do the contract printing either. This part is funny: > “We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more specifically servers, as opposed to looking to steal information,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. It sounds like they asked one of their IT staff what happened (or maybe one at Tribune) and got an off-the-record answer because IT isn't allowed to "talk to the press" even when they work for a newspaper. Then they published it before corporate PR finished deciding what to tell them because deadlines don't wait for PR departments.

Kalium 8y ago
> Then they published it before corporate PR finished deciding what to tell them because deadlines don't wait for PR departments. It is kind of funny to see this happen under one roof, though...

sodosopa 8y ago

Why would they give more information? It's an active crime scene.

reaperducer 8y ago

What was the shared platform? Was it targeted at multiple newspapers, or was this an attack on a single platform that just happens to be used by all of these newspapers? At one time all of these newspapers were owned by The Tribune Company in Chicago. Most still are. During the time they were one company, they operated off of a central publishing platform. When’s few of the newspapers were sold, they remained part of that platform. “Platform” is a word used in a different sense than in the tech industry. At the production level, news organizations do not operate with Microsoft Word and Adobe Illustrator and other common software. They use specialized software that is tailor made for the industry, and sometimes for the individual organization. Companies from the AP to Sony and a bunch you’ve probably never heard of make these massive pieces of software that tie together news production computers with printing pressed, massive digital media archives, and dozens, if not hundreds, of different types of machines. If you read the article more closely, you will see the specific type of ransomware that is believed to be used in this attack, and why this is believed to be the cause of the disruption. As for all the secrecy, sadly that is par for the course in the media industry, and doubly so for what is now Tribune Publishing.