We haven't had a high-profile media feed hijacking in a long time, but tonight someone sent an Apple News notification from Fast Company containing a racial slur and an invitation for a sexual act. The site appears to be offline, with visitors seeing a 404 error, after they posted similar content to the outlet's website.
An article that was posted to Fast Company's website before it disappeared had a message from "postpixel" detailing how they were able to execute the attack and deriding attempts to secure the outlet's publishing tools. A message posted to Fast Company's own site claims they got in thanks to a password that was shared across many accounts.
A forum for trading information stolen in security breeches was pointed to by the hackers. Thousands of employee records, as well as draft posts from the database, but said customer information was stored in a different database that they did not have access to
It is not known how many people received the blast, but a look at social media shows it went out. People who don't pay for Fast Company subscriptions see it on their phones.
The Apple News alert takeover may be the first time that a website has been taken over by a hacker. While the Fast Company message was offensive, someone with that kind of access could have used it to manipulate stock markets or cryptocurrencies.
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