It’s been a while since we’ve seen a high-profile media feed hijacking, but someone sent an Apple News notice from Fast Company tonight with a racist insult and an invitation to a specific sexual act.
Apple has responded to the event on its Apple News Twitter account, stating that Fast Company’s channel has been blocked.
The hack was verified by the publisher. “On Tuesday evening, Fast Company’s Apple News account was hijacked. A minute later, two profane and racist push alerts were delivered. The messages are ugly and contradict the substance of Fast Company. We are investigating the matter and have paused the stream as well as shut down FastCompany.com until we are certain that it has been fixed.”
Fast Company's Apple News account was hacked on Tuesday evening. Two obscene and racist push notifications were sent about a minute apart.
The messages are vile and not in line with the content and ethos of Fast Company. (continued below)
— Fast Company (@FastCompany) September 28, 2022
A piece on Fast Company’s website before it was removed featured a note from “postpixel,” which detailed how they were able to carry out the hack and mocked efforts to safeguard the outlet’s publishing capabilities. The message states they gained access by using a password shared by numerous users, including an administrator.
The hackers also referred to a site for exchanging information gained in security breaches, where they published the identical material beginning two days earlier. According to the forum post, they are releasing thousands of staff records as well as draught postings from the database, but customer information is held in a separate database to which they do not have access.