Hackers publish subscription details of “Blick” and Tamedia

In the hacker attack on the IT infrastructure of media group NZZ, customer data from “Blick” and the titles from Tamedia were captured. The hackers also threatened to release more data.

The information published on the Darknet after the hack included individual delivery addresses from the cantons of Aargau, Solothurn and Basel-Landschaft, the Tamedia titles announced in their Friday edition. The data collected in 2019 is publicly available material, such as first names, last names and addresses.

“Blick” announced on its online portal Friday evening that postal subscriber data from “Blick” and “SonntagsBlick” from the said cantons were among the hack’s published data.

CH Media: No ransom paid

According to CH Media boss Michael Wanner, the hackers have threatened to publish more data in the coming days. “We will continuously analyze the published data and, depending on the findings and the sensitivity of the information, will directly inform the people concerned,” he said in an interview with his newspapers published Friday. The company, which also owns Watson, has not paid a ransom. He gave no information about the amount requested.

Attack discovered March 24

The attack on the IT infrastructure of the media group NZZ, from which CH Media also purchases IT services, was discovered on March 24. As a result, the three titles “Aargauer Zeitung”, “Luzerner Zeitung” and “St. Galler Tagblatt” are temporarily discontinued in the various regional parts, so-called split editions. The “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” also appeared on certain days at a reduced rate.

On Wednesday, the responsible hacker group Play published company data of CH Media on the dark web. The companies AZ Vertriebs AG and VS Vertriebs GmbH, which belong to CH Media, are also responsible for the delivery of newspapers to subscribers of “Blick” and “SonntagsBlick”, as “Blick” wrote. According to Tamedia, AZ Vertriebs AG is also a delivery service for its newspapers. (sda)