Fast Company is a magazine company with its first issue published in 1995. It publishes six print issues each year, but often updates its website.
On September 27th, 2022 Fast Company sent out obscene messages to all of their Apple users. The hacker posted two messages, both containing the same words, about one minute apart. The messages contained racist remarks and offensive sexual references.
This was following a similar incident on the Fast Company website two days earlier in which an unauthorized party posted similar messages onto their site. FastCompany.com has been taken down until “the situation is resolved.”
The breach was to the internal push messaging systems of Fast Company. After the offensive messages were posted, Apple News users posted screenshots of the messages all over social media. Apple News posted, “An incredibly offensive alert was sent by Fast Company, which has been hacked. Apple News has disabled their channel.”
This breach occurred on September 27th, 2022.
The breach affected anyone that uses Apple News. Apple News had over 125 million users in 2020. This means that any of these people, including minors, could have received these messages on their phones. Apple itself has 1.8 billion users.
No files were affected by the breach; it wasn’t a hack in which the unauthorized actor compromised systems and stole information. It was more of an account takeover that has the power to traumatize millions of people.