Associated Press warns that AP Stylebook data breach led to phishing attack

The Associated Press is informing of a information breach impacting AP Stylebook customers wherever nan attackers utilized nan stolen information to behaviour targeted phishing attacks.

The AP Stylebook is simply a commonly utilized guideline connected grammar, punctuation, and penning style for journalists, magazines, and newsrooms worldwide.

This week, the Associated property warns that an aged third-party-managed AP Stylebook tract that was nary longer successful usage was hacked betwixt July 16 and July 22, 2023, allowing nan information for 224 customers to beryllium stolen.

The stolen accusation includes a customer's name, email address, thoroughfare address, city, state, zip code, telephone number, and User ID. For customers who entered tax-exempt IDs, specified arsenic a Social Security Number aliases Employer Identification Number, those IDs were stolen arsenic well.

The AP says they first learned of nan imaginable information breach connected July 20, 2023, aft AP Stylebook customers reported receiving phishing emails stating they needed to update their in installments paper information.

After learning of nan phishing attack, nan AP took nan aged tract and phishing offline to forestall further attacks.

At nan extremity of July, nan institution began alerting AP Stylebook customers of nan phishing attacks, informing that nan emails came from 'support@getscore.my[.]id' pinch a taxable akin to "Regarding AP Stylebook Order no. 07/20/2023 06:48:20 am." 

The Associated Press besides requires each AP Stylebook customers to reset their passwords connected nan adjacent login.

While this was not a important information breach, pinch only 224 customers impacted, nan login credentials for journalists and media companies are highly sought aft by cybercriminals.

Gaining entree to nan web of a media institution could lead to a wide assortment of attacks, including extortion and ransomware attacks, information theft, and cyber espionage.

In nan past, section and world media outlets suffered ransomware and cyberespionage attacks, including News Corp, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and German newspaper Heilbronn Stimme.

BleepingComputer contacted nan Associated Press to study much astir nan phishing onslaught and will update this article if we study more.