Cyberattack disrupts publication of Lee Enterprises’ newspapers

Major U.S. local newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises has disclosed having its operations impacted by a cybersecurity incident last week, hindering the delivery of printed newspapers, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

"Our technology response team has been working with third-party specialists to fully restore our systems and investigate the nature of these disruptions," said a Lee Enterprises spokesperson, who noted an ongoing effort to identify any information that may have been compromised as a result of the incident that was neither confirmed nor denied to be a ransomware intrusion. Attackers were reported by St. Louis Post-Dispatch, one of Lee Enterprises' publications, to have targeted the firm on Feb. 3, preventing access to page-building and story-publishing software. Similar statements regarding the intrusion were posted by other Lee Enterprises newspapers, some of which have only recovered systems access on Friday. Such a development comes amid a slew of recent intrusions against news outlets, including Agence France-Presse and the New York Times.