News Corp: Our email subscriber data may have been accessible to outsiders
Australia’s largest publisher News Corp has revealed that its email subscribers database may have been compromised.
In a short statement published on the website of The Australian late tonight, the company said:
“This afternoon News Corp Australia was made aware of a vulnerability in the security of our email newsletter database. Some personal information about people who subscribe to our email newsletters was potentially accessible from outside the company.
“The information does not include credit card details or passwords.
“We shut down the relevant systems promptly. The personal information then became inaccessible.
“We have found no evidence of malicious access to the relevant information. We will continue to examine this question.
“We sincerely apologise for what has happened.
“We are investigating this matter thoroughly to ensure this does not happen again.”
At the time of posting News Corp had not responded to an invitation to expand on the statement.
October 17 update: The statement appears to be a response to a story run by the Sydney Morning Herald this morning. In the article, the paper reports that an IT security expert found a vulnerability in the system that allowed access to data such as date of birth and basic demographic information shared by users when they signed up for an email newsletter. According to the SMH the IT expert “claimed it was likely a hacker had already used the same vulnerability he found to mine the database for subscriber information, though could not prove this”.
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