NYT 'phishing attack' may have come from Indian ISP

The latest attack on the New York Times' website is speculated to have come from an internet service provider based in India.

The hacking was earlier ruled to have been done by pro-Assad hactivist group Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), however, the domain handler of NYT, an Australian web hosting firm, Melbourne IT said that the hackers used a 'spear phishing' campaign to attack the site based in India.

Melbourne IT's CEO, Theo Hnarakis said that the attackers got access to the company's US client's username and password through phishing, Courier Mail reports.

According to the report, through phishing the hackers accessed the account of Melbourne IT's US clients, who resell web domains to companied including the NYT.

Hnarakis said that the attack came from an internet service provider based in India and the firm's investigation till now pointed to the SEA for the latest attack.

The company has shut down all email addresses thought to have been breached during the attack.

It is the second attack on the NYT in less than a month and the company had cited 'internal server problem' behind the August 14 major outage.