Fast Company Media Channel Hacked to Send Obscene Notifications to Apple News

Hackers managed to use Fast Company’s new channel to send obscene push notifications to Apple News, prompting the immediate removal of the news source.

Taking over a media channel, whether it’s YouTube, a newspaper or another type of publication, is nothing new. It usually involves some kind of scheme to persuade people to invest in crypto or something similar. This time, though, the attackers seemed to want a different outcome.

Apple News subscribers received a few notifications from FastCompany.com with obscene and racist messages. The messages were quickly removed by Apple News, which disabled their channel completely.

“An incredibly offensive alert was sent by Fast Company, which has been hacked. Apple News has disabled their channel,” is the message posted on Twitter by Apple. On their end, Fast Company took their website down. This would be the end of it, but things are a lot more complicated, according to The Verge.

The hackers had access to the publishing tools, which they used to send notifications to Apple News. But the same access was used to publish a short article on FastCompany.com in which attackers described in detail how they gained access. It turns out that one of the passwords the hackers got ahold of was shared by multiple employees across many accounts, including one with administrator access.

The article also linked to a forum where the hackers said they’d release information stolen from Fast Company infrastructure, which contained thousands of employee records and draft posts. They also said that they didn’t manage to steal customer information.

For now, Fast Company only confirmed the initial hack and not the following information showing up online regarding a potential data breach.