Hacking is great, but only when the hackers are on your side. Unfortunately, last Friday September 5, the International Women’s Media Foundation was hacked, defaced and had most of its original content destroyed.
The IWMF is a foundation that supports the empowerment of women journalists worldwide. As the website stated in a blog post September 12, the hacker was based out of Turkey, and due to the severity of the attack it is suspected the hack was intended to deliberately prevent IWMF from doing its work for women in the media. According to the statement, “the hacker replaced the IWMF’s extensive website with a single page displaying the message “Hacked – Good Bye Admins” and installed malicious code to block anyone else from logging in.” On the bright side, the hack was discovered and the website was restored to full working condition within 36 hours.
With hacking and surveillance technology where it is now, it’s not easy being a journalist, much less a female journalist. A survey done by the IWMF and the International News Safety Institute earlier this year on Violence and Harassment against Women in the News Media showed that about 20% of women who were surveyed “had experienced tapping, hacking and/or digital security threats.”
The IWMF is working to combat this kind of breach in security for journalists and even provides both hostile environment training and digital security training in its fellowships for this reason.
Get involved with the organization to help out their cause and read more about the work they do work here.
Images c/o IWMF.org and Facebook.
