> 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 -

> 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 (This is not a great thing to get pwned because it's not implausible for it to contain unpublished stories or confidential source material.)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.