Fast Company Hacked, Racist Alerts Go Out

Media company's website remains down hours later
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 28, 2022 6:22 AM CDT
Racist Push Alerts Follow Fast Company Hack
What Fast Company's website looks like now.   (Newser)

Business publication Fast Company shut down its website Tuesday evening following a hack, which resulted in subscribers on Apple News receiving two racist push notifications. The company's main news website was also defaced, reports the Washington Post. A Fast Company rep later said its "content management system account was hacked," per CNN. "As a result, two obscene and racist push notifications were sent to our followers in Apple News about a minute apart. The messages are vile and are not in line with the content and ethos of Fast Company." The company apologized to anyone who saw the two sentences, which "contained the n-word and graphic language," per the Post.

The company said the hack appeared to be related to a hack of FastCompany.com "that occurred on Sunday afternoon, when similar language appeared on the site’s home page and other pages. We shut down the site that afternoon and restored it about two hours later." A "sponsored content" article on the site—which credited cybersecurity researcher Vinny Troia, who apparently wasn't involved—indicated the hackers breached the company's WordPress program and from there were able to access Apple News programming, per the Post. It referenced a password including the word "pizza." "We are investigating the situation and have shut down FastCompany.com until the situation has been resolved," the statement said. The site remains offline as of this writing. Apple News also disabled Fast Company's channel. (More hackers stories.)

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