New York Post Says Employee Was Behind Offensive Posts, Not Cyberattack

The New York Post, one of the most widely circulated daily newspapers in New York City, blamed an employee for publishing racist, violent, and sexually explicit headlines about personalities and public figures on the newspaper's website and Twitter account.

In a report by CNBC, a spokesperson for the New York Post announced Thursday, Oct. 27, that an internal investigation confirmed an employee committed the improper activity, and that individual has been dismissed.

The Racist and Sexually Aggressive Posts

After discovering the posts, the tweets and articles in question were removed immediately.

Violent and graphic headlines directed at President Joe Biden and his son Hunter and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were published.

There were also racist headlines against New York City Mayor Eric Adams and a post attacking unionized teachers.

The White House, Ocasio-Cortez, and Adams' respective representatives did not immediately react to CNBC's requests for comment.

Lee Zeldin, a Republican running for governor of New York, and Kathy Hochul, a Democrat already serving in that position, were both named in explicit headlines as part of the attack.

There was no immediate response from a spokesman for Zeldin when CNBC asked for a comment. But, a representative for Hochul said on Thursday, "The New York Post has long fostered an ugly, toxic conversation on their front pages and social accounts, but these posts are more disgusting and vile than usual."

WordPress, a content management system that facilitates publication to the website of the New York Post has said that it would neither comment on current investigations nor speak on behalf of the Post, CNBC reported.

The offensive tweets were sent using the famous website plugin SocialFlow, which is used to promote news to various social media platforms. There are 2.8 million people who follow the Post outlet on Twitter.

Previous Announcement by News Corp

This now contradicts previous reports that said the incident was brought on by a cyberattack.

Iva Benson, a representative for News Corp, the company that owns the New York Post, earlier told TechCrunch that the newspaper had been hacked. The speculation was that the New York Post's content management system, which is used to publish stories and articles, had been compromised.

A Cyberattack Hit Another Publication

This incident occurred only a few weeks after a hacker broke into the content management system of Fast Company and sent readers inappropriate alerts from Apple News.

After discovering the cyberattack, Fast Company took its website down for more than a week in order to reconstruct its infrastructure.

The hacker, who went by the moniker "Thrax," published an essay on the website of Fast Company in which they described how they discovered a "ridiculously easy" default password that was shared across numerous accounts, including an administrator, and how this enabled them to get access to the news outlet's computer networks.

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Written by Trisha Kae Andrada