(London) The British Media The Guardian said on Wednesday that it was the victim of a “serious computer incident” obviously due to ransomware which affected its internal functioning without preventing the publication of articles on its site or the preparation of the daily paper.
The group’s management has asked its employees to telework for the rest of the week, while waiting for the incident to be resolved.
“A serious incident has affected our network and IT systems over the past 24 hours,” group chief executive Anna Bateson and editor Katharine Viner said in a message to staff quoted on the website. Guardian.
“We believe this to be a ransomware attack, but we continue to consider all possibilities,” they added.
The publication of articles on the left-wing media site continued on Wednesday afternoon and the management said it was “confident” of being able to release the paper newspaper on Thursday.
A ransomware attack consists of hackers breaking into an entity’s computer network and then locking its data. The perpetrators then ask the officials of that company, organization or administration to pay a ransom, most often in the form of cryptocurrencies, in exchange for the unlock.