AP News Website Suffers Disruption, Potentially Due to a Denial-of-Service Attack
The official news website of the Associated Press (AP) faced a significant disruption, raising suspicions of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, a deliberate act aimed at rendering a website inaccessible. A DoS attack occurs when malicious individuals overload a targeted system with an overwhelming volume of traffic or data, causing the system to become unresponsive to regular requests.
The motive behind a DoS attack can vary, with some attackers aiming to harm a business or organization for personal or competitive reasons. Others may utilize such attacks as a diversion tactic to draw attention away from other cybercrimes they are engaging in.
On Tuesday, individuals attempting to access apnews.com noticed abnormalities, as some links to specific stories experienced various malfunctions. Some pages appeared empty, while others displayed error messages. However, AP reported that the issue was resolved by Wednesday morning. Notably, the disruption did not affect AP’s delivery systems for clients and mobile applications.
Nicole Meir, a media relations manager at AP, addressed the situation and mentioned that they had observed intermittent surges in traffic. Their engineering team is currently investigating the cause, as they noticed that as they addressed traffic from one source, similar surges would emerge elsewhere.
Meanwhile, a hacktivist group called Anonymous Sudan announced on its Telegram channel its intention to launch attacks on Western news outlets, which coincided with the disruption on AP’s website. The group later shared screenshots of the AP and other news websites, claiming responsibility for successful DDoS attacks that caused the inaccessibility. However, AP has not yet confirmed whether Anonymous Sudan was indeed behind the attack.
Alexander Leslie, a cybersecurity analyst from the Recorded Future firm, shed light on the group’s tactics, describing it as a propaganda maneuver. By conducting brief attacks and capturing evidence of a short-lived outage affecting a limited user base, the group amplifies it as a major accomplishment.
The AP news website disruption serves as a reminder of the evolving cybersecurity landscape, where organizations must remain vigilant against potential attacks. Detailed investigations will be conducted to determine the true source and motives behind the disruption.
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