Reuters blog hacked, Syrian cyber war suspected cause

Ouch. You do not want to be the person in charge of Reuters’ online security right now. The renowned news agency’s blogging platform has been hacked for the second time in two weeks.

This time the hack saw a fake story about the Saudi foreign minister dying posted on the platform. Apparently on high alert after its 3 August attack, the agency pulled the post fairly soon after it went up.

“Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted. We are working to address the problem,” Barb Burg, director of global communications at Reuters News, said in a statement.

At present the company says it doesn’t have any fast information on who the hackers might be. It does however seem to think that it might have something to do with the escalating cyber war between supporters and opponents of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

At The Next Web notes though, things have been erratic on the platform of late. Even verifiable stories — like this one — have had people convinced that the site had been hacked again.

Reuters blogging platform hacked for second time this month. Company has no immediate comment on who was behind it. reut.rs/R8zW48

— Jim Finkle(@techwriterjim) August 15, 2012