Yahoo Movies Fast Company Hackers Send News Alerts With N-Word To Apple Users
Fast Company shut down its website Tuesday after the media company was hacked and two racist news notifications were pushed to readers subscribed through Apple News, according to Reuters.
The messages contained the N-word and were signed, “Thrax was here.”
Fast Company said it is investigating and has suspended its Apple feed and shut down its website “until we are certain the situation has been resolved.” Hackers breached its content management system Tuesday night, the company added in a series of tweets.
“Two obscene and racist push notifications were sent out about a minute apart,” the company said. “The messages are vile and not in line with the content and ethos of Fast Company.”
Publishers like Fast Company commonly link their digital publishing tools to Apple News — a news-aggregation app found on the company’s iPhones, iPads and computers — to send notifications and news alerts to users who subscribe to their feed.
Fast Company said hackers commandeered those publishing tools to send the alerts in question. Even its main website was defaced, with an article labeled as sponsored content describing how the breach was accomplished, according to The Washington Post.
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
That description claimed the anonymous group broke into the website’s WordPress portal and found an account login for Apple News, which tweeted out its own statement after the first message went through to clarify that it disabled Fast Company’s channel.
Both Apple and news sites in general have been hacked before.
A false 2013 tweet from The Associated Press claiming President Barack Obama was injured by explosions caused the stock market to tumble. In 2016, spyware was discovered in seemingly routine Apple iOS updates.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
