A notorious Russian hacker offered on Christmas to sell access to a British Broadcasting Corporation server through an underground forum, according to Reuters.
Cybersecurity firm Hold Security LLC, which monitors underground forums for potentially stolen information, alerted Reuters to the incident, and pegged the hacker as someone who goes by the aliases "HASH" and "Rev0lver." The reportedly compromised site, ftp.bbc.co.uk, is a file transfer protocol, which are generally used for moving large files on the Internet.
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"It's definitely a notch in someone's belt," Hold Security founder Alex Holden told Reuters.
HASH reportedly proved the hack by showing files that only someone with access to the server could procure. While it's common for hackers to broker deals for compromised servers, Hold Security found no evidence of any deals for the BBC server or other stolen data, according to the report.
"We do not comment on security issues," a BBC spokesperson told Mashable in an emailed statement.
Justin Clarke, a consultant for a separate cybersecurity firm called Cylance Inc, explained the possible ramifications of the attack in the Reuters report, saying the compromised server "establishes a foothold within BBC's network, which may allow an attacker to pivot and gain further access to internal BBC resources."
Media organizations are common targets for hackers. Reuters itself fell victim to an attack in July, when the Syrian Electronic Army breached one of its Twitter accounts. The SEA has also hacked other high-profile organizations such as The Washington Post, The Onion, the Associated Press' Twitter account, The New York Times and Twitter.
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