Finance news firm Fast Company shut down its website on Tuesday night after it was hacked. The hackers allegedly sent obscene push notifications to Apple News subscribers.
According to sources, Fast Company’s content management system (CMS) suffered a cyberattack on Tuesday evening. The hacker sent two obscene and racist push notifications to Apple News subscribers.
Both the notifications were sent a minute apart from each other and were highly controversial and against the policies of Fast Company The company is investigating the situation and has temporarily shut down its operation, especially those associated with Apple News.
Fast Company has retained a leading global incident response and cybersecurity firm and, together, we are investigating the situation. We have shut down https://t.co/U9iS8QxeiW until the situation is resolved.
— Fast Company (@FastCompany) September 28, 2022
However, this is not the first attack on the firm. As per reports, the publication website ‘FastCompany.com’ was also attacked by hackers on Sunday. Experts suggest that the two attacks may be interlinked as the same language was used on the sites and other pages.
The company shut down its website on Sunday and restored it after two hours. During both attacks, the visitors who visited the website were greeted with a 404 error page — (a status code page that tells the user/visitor that the requested page is unavailable and it could not find the client-requested resources).
The company’s homepage is still inaccessible, but it notified users about the breach. “Fast Company regrets that such abhorrent language appeared on our platform and in Apple News, and we apologize to anyone who saw it before it was taken down,” read a statement released by the company, CNN reported.
“We immediately retained a leading global incident response and cybersecurity firm and together are investigating the situation. We have shut down FastCompany.com until the situation is solved”, added the statement.
After the push notification was sent, Apple News disabled their channel and limited the users who received the offensive message on their Apple devices. Apple News also addressed the issue in a tweet and said, “An incredibly offensive alert was sent by Fast Company, which has been hacked. Apple News has disabled their channel.”
An incredibly offensive alert was sent by Fast Company, which has been hacked. Apple News has disabled their channel.
— Apple News (@AppleNews) September 28, 2022
The company is yet to release any statement about who could have been behind the attack.
