Australia’s largest Chinese-language media platform Media Today, which is used daily by 1.2 million Chinese Australians, has been hit by a cyber attack.
“Between 1am and 8am AEST today, the Australia Today app was maliciously attacked by hackers from overseas,” Media Today said in a statement.
“The attack originated from IP addresses in the US, Canada and Hong Kong and was executed against the platform’s registration system, attempting to use SMS verification codes to obtain user passwords and steal their accounts.
“The corresponding users will receive verification codes on their mobile phones. These codes are sent automatically and cannot be obtained by the hacker, nor can they be used for verification. All the related requests are ‘pending’.
“It is expected that 110,000 users will receive verification codes. This is not a case of account or phone number leakage, but a random attempt by the attacker to try Australian numbers on our platform.”
Media Today was founded in 2011. According to the company, 20 million attempts were made to reset user passwords. Despite this, the outlet stresses that “users need not worry about account security.”
Australian police are investigating the attack.