News agency AFP hit by cyberattack, client services impacted

AFP suffered a cyberattack affecting its IT systems and content delivery for partners, the incident impacted some client services.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported a cyberattack on Friday that impacted its IT systems and content delivery for partners. The media agency confirmed that the global news coverage remains unaffected, however some client services were impacted.

AFP is investigating the security event in collaboration with France’s cybersecurity agency, ANSSI.

“AFP’s technical teams are working on the incident with the support of the French National Agency for IT Systems Security (ANSSI). The relevant authorities in France have been notified. We are currently working to analyse and deal with this incident.” states Agence France-Presse. “AFP’s newsroom and all its services continue to provide news coverage across the world.”

On Monday, AFP’s website experienced intermittent outages, redirecting users to an “Under Maintenance” page. The company did not share details about the attack and no group has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack.

Agence France-Presse is an international general and multimedia news agency. Its mission is to provide rapid, comprehensive, impartial and verified coverage of world news, in all areas and in all its forms: video, photography, text, computer graphics, and audio.

It is responsible for collecting, verifying, cross-checking and disseminating information, in a neutral, factual form, intended to be used directly by all types of media (radio, television, written press, websites) and also to serve as a source and alert for large companies and administrations. With a network of 2,600 employees, including 1,700 active journalists based in 260 cities across 150 countries, AFP is one of the largest news agencies in the world, along with Reuters and Associated Press. It provides news in 6 languages: French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Arabic.

BleepingComputer reported that the AFP warned media companies via email that the cyberattack may have compromised FTP credentials used to receive AFP content. They urged partners to change passwords and secure their reception systems.

“As a reminder, the passwords on your FTP servers that receive AFP content may have been compromised. Therefore, we recommend you change your passwords and check all your reception systems are secure,” reads AFP’s email to partners.”

Pierluigi Paganini

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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Agence France-Presse)