DC Radio: WTOP Website Victim of Cyber Attack

WTOP.com is currently dealing with a malicious cyber attack, which attempts to use our site to infect computers with malware when using the Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

To help protect website visitors and prevent any further damage, the station has blocked access to WTOP.com from Internet Explorer. We believe Chrome, Firefox and Safari are safe alternatives, and suggest you use one of these browsers to access the WTOP website.

WTOP's sister website, Federal News Radio.com, was also affected by the attack in the same manner.

The cyber attack which compromised our web servers injected code into FederalNewsRadio.com and WTOP.com, redirecting vulnerable browsers to rogue websites which spread the FakeAV malware or a variant of it.

The stations advises website visitors and if they have been on either site recently using IE, they should perform a malware scan to check for an infection and get it cleaned.

WTOP is still in the process of performing a thorough analysis to ensure their systems are free of malicious content. 

WTOP is one of several media websites that "were compromised and redirecting user traffic to an Exploit Kit serving the same FakeAV malware variant..." according to a blog post by Eddie Mitchell, a security engineer with Invincea.

Mitchell wrote the attacks against Federal News Radio and its sister station, WTOP, is "likely an indicator of a larger more widespread attack against online media sites."

Tweets by @WTOP