Cyberattack hits journalists’ email accounts at Washington Post

Journalists at The Washington Post were targeted in a cyberattack on June 12, 2025, which may have breached a small number of their email accounts, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Staff at the Washington, D.C.-based newspaper were told their Microsoft email accounts had been compromised, possibly granting access to emails they had sent and received, according to an internal memo by Executive Editor Matt Murray.

The memo said a small number of journalists’ email accounts were impacted and that a forensic team has been hired to investigate the breach, reported Bloomberg News. Reporters on the national security and economic policy teams, including some who write about China, were among those who were targeted, the Journal added.

The night after the hacking, the Post required all staff to reset their login credentials. And while email is often the primary entry point for hackers, reporters at the Post are said to use encrypted messaging platforms like Signal to communicate with sources, according to the Journal.

Microsoft and the Washington Post did not reply to queries from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Staff affected by the hacking were instructed not to discuss the cyberattack, the Journal reported.

“Although our investigation is ongoing, we believe the incident affected a limited number of Post journalists’ accounts, and we have contacted those whose accounts have been impacted,” Murray said in the memo, which was also obtained by CNN.

The Bloomberg report on the breach cited a source who said Chinese state-backed hackers had repeatedly probed a part of the Post’s IT infrastructure in April and May, although it wasn’t clear if that was related to the latest attack.

The Post had previously reported that it was targeted by hackers in multiple breaches that were discovered in 2011. At that time, hackers targeted its main IT server, compromising sensitive administrative passwords and potentially giving hackers broad access to the organization’s systems. Some of the attacks have been linked to groups based in China, the paper said.

Journalists are frequently targets of cyberattacks, as their emails often contain sensitive and confidential information — particularly related to their sources.

In 2022, for instance, the Journal was also reported to have been hit by a cyberattack where the intruders had access to its reporters’ emails and documents. The hackers appeared to be interested in issues of importance to the Chinese government, the paper said.