The Guardian has been hit by a serious IT incident, which is believed to be a ransomware attack.
The incident began late on Tuesday night and has affected parts of the company’s technology infrastructure, with staff told to work from home.
There has also been some disruption to behind-the-scenes services.
Online publishing is largely unaffected, with stories continuing to be written and published to the Guardian website and app.
The company said it was confident it could still produce Thursday’s print newspaper.
News organisations around the world have been regular targets for cyber-attacks both by criminals and nation states, although at this stage the company said it believed the incident was likely to be a ransomware attack. These involve hackers gaining access to a computer system then making demands to restore services.
The Guardian Media Group chief executive, Anna Bateson, and the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, told staff: “As everyone knows, there has been a serious incident which has affected our IT network and systems in the last 24 hours. We believe this to be a ransomware attack but are continuing to consider all possibilities.
“We are continuing to publish globally to our website and apps and although some of our internal systems are affected, we are confident we will be able to publish in print tomorrow. Our technology teams have been working to deal with all aspects of this incident, with the vast majority of our staff able to work from home as we did during the pandemic.
“We will continue to keep our staff and anyone else affected informed. We will update everyone again at the end of the day. With a few key exceptions we would like everyone to work from home for the remainder of the week unless we notify you otherwise.
“Thank you to everyone working hard throughout this incident to keep us publishing, looking after our readers, supporters and advertisers, and to keep our core systems available for colleagues.”
www.theguardian.com
