Apple News: Users bombarded with obscene and racist notifications. Hackers break into Fast Company’s CMS
Apple News sent out some racist and obscene notifications to its users last night. Fault of a cyber attack against the information site Fast Company.
The Apple News account of Fast Company, a US news site, was hacked by a hacker. The criminal managed to log into the company’s CMS and then sent some obscene notifications .
The hacker responsible for this ‘stunt’ explained that he had gone out to access the Fast Company account using a poorly protected password, which had been used for a variety of company panels, accounts and services. Apple intervened promptly, suspending Fast Company’s channel until the company regained full control of its IT systems.
Fast Company’s having a fun night right now with a racist hack. pic.twitter.com/PRsstA2KBV
– Zach Haberman (@ZHaberman) September 28, 2022
The publisher did the same, temporarily closing the site to prevent the hacker from vandalizing the homepage (again), posting fake news or other offensive content. Fast Company explained that the hackers had taken control of the entire CMS of the site, that is the management system which, in addition to the notifications of Apple News, is also used for the publication and editing of all the articles.
The incident dates back to Tuesday evening. Apple managed to intervene relatively quickly: users received only two notifications, sent about a minute apart from each other.
Fast Company has issued an apology note, noting that the contents of the notifications do not reflect the company’s values. Before the site was taken offline, the hackers had managed to post a message on the home page, making fun of the company’s vain and clumsy attempts to prevent the cyber attack.
