China’s state media hacked, possibly in failed blackmail attempt

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China's second-biggest state-owned news agency went down for an hour Wednesday night due to a hacking attack. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:30pm, 4 Jun 2015Updated: 5:37pm, 4 Jun 2015

One of China’s biggest news agencies was hacked for over an hour on Wednesday night in what may have been a clumsy attempt to extort money from the state-owned media outlet, local media on the Chinese mainland reported on Thursday.

Chinanews.cn, the official website of China’s No. 2 state-owned news agency after Xinhua, went down at around 11pm but had brought some of its services back online by midnight, the Beijing Times reported on its official microblog.

As of late Thursday afternoon, no one had come forward to claim responsibility for the attack and the agency's online services were still disrupted with formatting problems still plaguing its home page and sub-channels.

This is just the latest incident highlighting how companies and organisations in mainland China and Hong Kong are ill-prepared to deal with cyber security risks.

However, some of the cases are less opaque in a country famous for its lack of transparency.

Ctrip, China’s biggest online travel agent, faced a 12-hour breakdown in service on May 28 that the company initially blamed on hackers, but later changed tack and described as the result of an error by one of its members of staff.

Chinanews.cn offered no further information about the incident. Most mainland media also did not report it.