The Taiwanese business magazine Business Weekly (商業週刊) has been gradually restoring its website since suffering a cyberattack in early September. The magazine’s primary website, plus four other websites associated with the Business Weekly Group, were impacted. Business Weekly’s main site was inaccessible for a total of seven days.
While most of the websites in its network have been restored, some, like Business Weekly’s online shop, remain inaccessible as of this writing. An initial announcement from September 9, the day after the attack was discovered, called the attack’s impact “quite extensive” (此次受影響範圍較大) and added that a third-party investigation had been initiated.
The latest update, released on September 24, also warned readers about fraudulent messages claiming to offer refunds and requesting their financial information.
The origin of the attack remains unclear as of this writing.
Business Weekly Group is a division of the Cite Media Holding Group (城邦媒體控股集團), a publishing and media conglomerate in Taiwan that owns nearly 40 publishing brands. It is owned by TOM Group Limited, the Hong Kong-based media and technology company with regional headquarters in Taipei and Beijing.
On September 15, TOM Group disclosed that the attack led to the encryption of certain data on its Taiwan server, and that the attack had spread to TOM Group’s servers in Hong Kong. The Group said it immediately isolated the affected systems from the internet to contain the spread of the attack.
Tech news websites NetAdmin and Communication Components Magazine, both of which are also owned by the Cite Media Holding Group, have also been inaccessible since the attack in early September.
Taiwan’s cybersecurity news website CyberQ found that Business Weekly relied on posting its announcements on a subdomain via a third-party platform when the main domain was under recovery. This separate subdomain, according to CyberQ’s analysis, has been used for marketing purposes since at least 2021.
