After being hacked and sending ‘obscene and racist’ alerts to Apple customers through the iPhone manufacturer’s Apple News service, U.S. business and media newspaper Fast Company announced that it has shut down its website on Tuesday evening.
The alerts were sent out one after the other and said, “N****** Tongue My Anus.” THERE WAS THRAX.”
The push alerts stunned readers of the media outlet, who posted their amazement on Twitter.
Is it just me, or did anybody else receive this Fast Company Apple News post notification? a Twitter user asked.
Did Fast Company just got hacked????? another person asked, uploading a horrified GIF. Considering the message I just received on my phone!
In order to offer push alerts to Apple consumers who subscribe to the news publisher’s channel, news publishers utilizing the Apple News aggregation app may link their digital publishing tools to Apple News.
According to Fast Company, hackers compromised those publishing tools.
A minute apart, two “obscene and racist push alerts” were delivered by hackers, according to a tweet from Fast Company, which added that the Apple News stream had been halted until the issue was investigated.
The magazine said, “We are looking into the matter and have paused the feed and shut down FastCompany.com until we are certain that the matter has been handled.”
On Tuesday night, while trying to access the Fast Company website, a 404 error message appeared.
Following the closure, Fast Company said that the alerts were sent via a breach of its content management system, which is used by news organizations to publish and manage their articles.
Fast Company’s channel has been shut off, according to a tweet from Apple News.
Fast Company said that on Sunday afternoon, when identical wording appeared on its main page, it had previously been the victim of a website attack that was “probably linked,” prompting a two-hour site shutdown.
Mansueto Ventures LLC, a publishing company, owns Fast Company.