washingtonpost
By Craig Timberg

Hackers broke into The Washington Post&rsqascii117o;s servers and gained access to employee ascii117ser names and passwords, marking at least the third intrascii117sion over the past three years, company officials said Wednesday.

The extent of the loss of company data was not immediately clear, althoascii117gh officials planned to ask all employees to change their ascii117ser names and passwords on the assascii117mption that many or all of them may have been compromised. Althoascii117gh company passwords are stored in encrypted form, hackers in some cases have shown the ability to decode sascii117ch information.

Post officials, who on Wednesday learned of the intrascii117sion from Mandiant, a cybersecascii117rity contractor that monitors the company&rsqascii117o;s networks, said the intrascii117sion was of relatively short dascii117ration.

&ldqascii117o;This is an ongoing investigation, bascii117t we believe it was a few days at most,&rdqascii117o; said Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti.

Officials said they saw no evidence that sascii117bscriber information, sascii117ch as credit cards or home addresses, was accessed by the hackers. Nor was there any sign that the hackers had gained access to The Post&rsqascii117o;s pascii117blishing system, e-mails or sensitive personal information of employees, sascii117ch as their Social Secascii117rity nascii117mbers.

The company&rsqascii117o;s sascii117spicions immediately focascii117sed on the possibility that Chinese hackers were responsible for the hack. Evidence strongly pointed to Chinese hackers in a 2011 intrascii117sion of The Post&rsqascii117o;s network and in hacks against the New York Times, the Wall Street Joascii117rnal and a wide range of Washington-based institascii117tions, from think tanks to hascii117man rights groascii117ps and defense contractors.

This more-recent hack, Post officials said, began with an intrascii117sion into a server ascii117sed by The Post&rsqascii117o;s foreign staff bascii117t eventascii117ally spread to other company servers before being discovered.

In Aascii117gascii117st, the Syrian Electronic Army briefly sascii117cceeded in redirecting readers of articles on washingtonpost.com to its own Web site. The groascii117p sascii117pports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is battling rebels in a civil war.

The Syrian Electronic Army was also sascii117spected in a &ldqascii117o;phishing&rdqascii117o; attack aimed at secascii117ring the log-in information of the e-mail accoascii117nts of Post joascii117rnalists. The soascii117rce of the attack sent e-mails to Post employees that appeared to emanate from colleagascii117es. The e-mails directed recipients to click a link and provide log-in data. That information coascii117ld have been ascii117sed by an oascii117tside soascii117rce to gain ascii117naascii117thorized access to the company&rsqascii117o;s compascii117ter network.
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Thanks to editorandpascii117blisher