The Next Edition, one of Nigeria’s emerging investigative newspapers, has, in the past few weeks, faced sustained attacks by hackers traced to Mexico, Germany and the United States of America.
The attacks were disclosed by the Managing Editor of the newspaper, Mr. Ibanga Isine, in a statement issued on Saturday.
According to him, “the cyber-attack was so intense on Monday, June 18, that our platform was taken down for over nine hours, forcing our technical team to work overnight to clean the malware and block further invasion on the site.”
He gave the IP address of the attacker as 187.177.41.10, revealing further that investigations traced the attackers’ location to Mexico on latitude -25.6866, and longitude -100.3167.
“Specifically, the aggression was carried out from Hotel Son Mar located at Av Alfonso Reyes 1211, Col Obrera, Sarabia, 64490 Monterrey, N.L., Mexico. The contact address of the hotel is ±52 81 8125 1300 and the URL is sonmar. com. mx.
“The IP address of the attacker from the US is 198.7.58.99 with username: Admin3, hostname: leaseweb. com, location: Manassas,” Isine disclosed.
He also disclosed that the newspaper was attacked from Germany by someone with the username: Admin3 with an IP address: 159.65.126.182 traced to Frankfurt.
He pointed out that the attacks began after the newspaper completed and was about to publish a major investigative report.
Speaking on the attacks, the Editor-in-Chief of the Newspaper, Ms. Victoria Ibanga, said the whole affair was a “deliberate and criminal attempt to stop the legitimate cause of truth and an assault on free speech and freedom of the press.”
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She said further: “We want to bring to your notice that we have come under severe attack on the cyberspace during the past few days and continuing. The enemies of free speech were successful in pulling our platform down and for nine hours would not allow us to carry out our legitimate duties of informing, educating and entertaining our audience and holding power accountable to the people.”
Ms. Ibanga stressed that, “we would not be cowed and will continue to do everything within the limits of the law to remain online and do our duties.”
She added that although the newspaper had reclaimed its platform, the attackers were still making serious attempts to compromise the platform.
Meanwhile, the Management of The Next Edition has urged all practitioners and owners of online media to join hands in fighting “these criminals by exposing them and ensuring we collectively carry out our legitimate duties without let or hindrance.”
