British Daily Newspaper ‘The Guardian’ has made an official statement yesterday saying that its computer networks were infiltrated by a cybersecurity unit of Saudi Arabia early this year.
However, the damage was controlled as the UK’s news daily received a tip-off related to the attack from a source from Riyadh just before the cyber attack.
The London based news resource says that the attack was launched in retaliation to the murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi and two of its senior journalist’s email accounts were compromised.
The Guardian’s report argues that the attack was a state-sponsored one as the involvement of a top aide and confidant of Saudi King Mohammad Bin Salman has been confirmed.
When CNN questioned some of the government officials of Saudi Arabia they were not ready to respond to the questions on an immediate note.
It has to be notified over here that Saudi Arabia has some serious anti-cybercrime laws in place and so is likely not to take the allegations on a lighter note.
Note 1- Journalist Jamal Khashoggi working for the Washington Post was killed in last October and The Guardian argues that the assassination was done on the nod of Saudi Prince Salman.
Note 2- This is not the first time when reports of media outlets being cyber attacked have emerged. In the year 2013, Chinese hackers were alleged to have infiltrated the database of renowned media outlet ‘The New York Times’ where some sensitive content related to the country’s leadership was stolen. However, Beijing never confirmed the incident and added that it was a story fabricated by some yellow journalists hailing from the west.
