Cyberattack costs Publishing giant Lee Enterprises $2M in Restoration Costs
Nearly 40,000 people had their Social Security numbers exposed during a cyberattack in February on Lee Enterprises. The company is one of the largest owners of local newspapers in the U.S. In addition, Lee Enterprises newsrooms across the United States reported that the attack triggered a systems outage. The outage forced the publisher to shutdown many of its networks. The shutdown lead to widespread printing and delivery disruptions for dozens of newspapers.
BleepingComputer reported the outage had caused significant issues, including corporate VPNs being down and lost access to internal systems and cloud storage. A week later, the company submitted a filing with the SEC revealing that it got hit by ransomware. Qilin ransomware gang claimed to have stolen 120,000 documents totaling 350 GB in size and threatened to release them all on March 5.
MAY 2025 UPDATE: The newspaper chain said the attack will have lingering impacts on its balance sheet, and its lender waived certain payments. Lee Enterprises said it incurred $2 million in restoration costs.
References
- Lee Enterprises Reports Second Quarter Results May 8, 2025
- More than 75 Lee Enterprises newspapers affected by cyberattack
- Lee Enterprises spent $2M for ransomware recovery
- Newspaper giant Lee Enterprises says nearly 40,000 Social Security numbers leaked in ransomware attack
- Media giant Lee Enterprises says data breach affects 39,000 people
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