Lee Enterprises, a major media conglomerate that operates numerous newspapers throughout the United States, has confirmed that a cyberattack on its systems is responsible for the ongoing disruptions affecting a variety of newspapers and media outlets nationwide.
In a customer email disseminated on Friday, which was reviewed by TechCrunch, CEO Kevin Mowbray stated that the company is diligently working to “fully restore our systems” following the cyberattack that occurred earlier that week.
Lee Enterprises spokesperson Tracy Rouch confirmed to TechCrunch that the outages stemmed from a “cybersecurity incident” and that the company is “now focused on identifying what information, if any, may have been compromised.”
The spokesperson did not disclose whether the company had received any communication from the hackers or whether it has established a timeline for recovery. Additionally, the company refrained from commenting on whether it possesses the technical capabilities, such as logs, to ascertain if any data was accessed or stolen.
Details about the nature of the cyberattack remain undisclosed by Lee, and no further comments were provided beyond the email.
As one of the largest newspaper publishers in the U.S., Lee provides publishing technology and website services to 72 publications, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which first reported the story on Friday.
According to the Post-Dispatch, while there have been no missed publishing days, many of this week’s editions were impacted. Some newspapers were smaller in volume on certain days, as noted by the Post-Dispatch.
Other news organizations, including the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming, have reported being affected by the cyberattack on Lee. In a report on its website, the Star-Tribune mentioned that “many of Lee’s newspapers initially were not able to build pages and publish, though the company has been actively working to print and deliver back issues.” The newspaper’s website also cautioned that the cyberattack could “temporarily affect access to subscription accounts.”
An email dated February 3 and sent to all Lee employees, which TechCrunch reviewed, indicated that a data center hosting applications and services utilized by Lee employees and its media outlets was offline, affecting systems used for subscriber services.
Later the same day, another email to Lee employees noted that its call center applications, certain phone lines, and other essential systems—including the VPN for remote workers and single sign-on for accessing applications—were also inaccessible.
As of Monday, the outages have not yet been resolved. Lee has not made its Chief Information Security Officer, Rob Hoffpauir, available for an interview.
This week, Lee Enterprises released its latest quarterly earnings report, revealing earnings of $144.6 million for the fiscal first quarter, reflecting a 7% decline year-over-year. However, there was no mention of the outages or the cyberattack in the report.
This incident marks the second known cyberattack on Lee Enterprises in the past five years. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021 that Iranian hackers had infiltrated Lee’s content management system as part of a disinformation campaign leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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