Lee Enterprises confirms being targeted by hackers, currently investigating security incident

Lee Enterprises, one of the largest newspaper publishers in the United States, has acknowledged that a cyberattack is responsible for an ongoing disruption of several media outlets.

According to TechCrunch, CEO Kevin Mowbray sent an email to customers last week saying that the company was working to “fully restore” its systems following a cyberattack that took place earlier that week.

A Lee Enterprises spokesperson confirmed that a “cybersecurity event” caused outages at several newspapers and media outlets across the United States, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Casper Star-Tribune.

In an email that was sent to all employees on Monday February 3, the company allegedly reported that one of its data centers hosting applications and services used by Lee employees and media outlets was offline, including its systems for subscriber services.

In a second email that was sent later that same day, Lee Enterprises said that its call center applications, some phone lines and other core systems, including its VPN service for remote access control and single sign-on for accessing applications, were inaccessible.

The media giant is currently investigating what information may have been possibly affected by the security incident.

Last week, Lee Enterprises reported its first quarter results. The company’s total operating revenue declined 7% compared to last year to $144.6 million. However, the cyberattack wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the financial report.

“On February 3, 2025, the company experienced a technology outage due to a cyber incident affecting certain business applications, resulting in an operational disruption. The company is actively investigating the incident, implementing recovery measures, and assessing the potential impact on its operations, financial condition, and internal controls. As of the date of this filing, the company has not identified any impact that is material; however, the evaluation remains ongoing,” Lee Enterprises says in its most recent quarterly report addressed to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Lee Enterprises provides local news and information, and advertising services in the United States. It owns a subscription and advertising platform that provides services such as search engine optimization, search engine marketing, web and mobile production, social media services, and reputation monitoring and management.

In addition, Lee Enterprises is also a provider of local news and information, with daily newspapers, rapidly growing digital products and nearly 350 weekly and specialty publications serving 72 markets in 25 states.