Hackers were able to access the credentials for more than 7,000 file transfer protocol (FTP) sites and, in some instances, uploaded malware to FTP servers with their newfound access.
On Thursday, PCWorld revealed the findings discovered by Wisconsin-based Hold Security, and said that The New York Times was among the many organizations impacted by the incident.
In a news release, Hold Security further revealed that attackers may have ultimately desired to gain control of victims' web sites. The attack could be scaled by “plant[ing] PHP scripts armed with backdoors (shells) and viruses in multiple directories hoping that these directories map to web servers of the victim companies to gain control of the web services,” Hold Security said.
