Intellectual Property Law

BusinessWeek's web site has been attacked by hackers and infected with code designed to deliver malware to readers, according to anti-virus firm Sophos.

Hackers used a SQL injection attack to infect a section of the BusinessWeek site that offers information to MBA students about finding employment. According to Sophos, hundreds of pages on the web site were affected.

The attack script embedded in BusinessWeek's site would take malware from a Russian web site and deliver it to readers' machines. The Russian site was not online as of this morning when Sophos wrote about it, but since the malware was still on BusinessWeek's site, the attack would work as soon as the hackers revived it.

It's not known how long the malware has been on the site or if any readers were infected by it. Sophos said it informed BusinessWeek of the problem a week ago.

BusinessWeek has released a statement:

"Online security is a top priority and, while we continue to investigate the matter, we are confident that our readers' personal information has not been compromised. The attack affected only one application within a specific section of our website and that application has been removed. We continue to work to ensure the integrity of our site and to protect it from future illegal and malicious hacking activity."

Here's a video from Sophos discussing the attack:

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