A Reuters deputy social media editor accused of conspiring with hacktivist group Anonymous sent a message to the public via Facebook in an attempt to clear his name.
Last Thursday, Matthew Keys, 26, was indicted in California on charges that he damaged a computer and aided Anonymous' brief defacement of an article posted on The Los Angeles Times website.
A Reuters.com editor maintained his innocence after being suspended with pay on Friday following a US federal indictment on charges he aided members of the Anonymous hacking collective.
Matthew Keys, 26, a deputy social media editor, was indicted on Thursday by a federal grand jury in Sacramento, California, on three criminal counts. The alleged events occurred before he joined Reuters, the indictment indicated.
The blogging platform of the Reuters News website was hacked and a false posting saying Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died was illegally posted on a Reuters journalist's blog, the company said on Wednesday.
"Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted. We are working to address the problem," Barb Burg, director of global communications at Reuters News, said in a statement.
News service Reuters appears to still be running the same outdated version of WordPress that allowed its blogging platform to be compromised by attackers last week.
Attackers published fake blog posts on Friday, including a purported interview with the leader of the Free Syrian Army. Mark Jaquith, one of the lead developers behind WordPress, told The Wall Street Journal that Reuters had been running version 3.1.1 instead of the latest version, 3.4.1. There are at least 20 reported vulnerabilities in version 3.1.1.
The Reuters news service suffered a second successful hacker attack this weekend, just 48 hours after a computer intruder was able to post fake news stories on its web site. In Sunday's attack, a small Reuters Twitter feed -- @ReutersTech , with 17,000 followers -- was briefly controlled by hackers.
"Earlier today @ReutersTech was hacked and changed to @ReutersME," Reuters announced on its Twitter feed Sunday. "The account has been suspended and is currently under investigation."
The Reuters blogging platform was hacked on Friday, and a false story about an alleged interview with a Syrian rebel leader was posted. On Sunday, Reuters suffered a second security breach in which hackers gained control of one of its Twitter accounts. While Twitter hasn't commented on the latter, we have more information on the former: Reuters forgot to keep its WordPress installation updated.
