Anime industry news website Anime News Network (ANN) has been compromised in an apparent cyber attack on Tuesday (Philippine time) which took its website offline.

According to @dnsstream on Twitter, the Domain Name Servers (DNS) of animenewsnetwork.com has been changed from its registry at 08:35am Philippine time.

 

At 10:30am PHL time, Anime News Network has posted on their Facebook page that they are experiencing “technical problems”, and they are working to resolve the problem. ANN and its staff has since gone silent on social media.

 

 

During the early hours of the attack, according to posts on social media, the website’s front page has been changed to a page  with the word “Anime” and a clock in a dark background, while playing an offensive background music.

As of press time, the domain now shows an “NXDOMAIN” error message.

According to the website’s WHOIS registry, the contact information may have also been changed.

Screenshot from WHO.IS

 

Anime News Network’s Twitter accounts was also not spared on the attack, as they lost control of @Anime, which is the website’s primary Twitter account.

As of press time, the account, which has been locked, is using an image of Haruka Takeyama of Sakura Trick as its profile image.

 

@ANNZac, the Twitter account of ANN Executive Editor and ANNCast podcast co-host Zac Bertschy, was also compromised and has been “suspended”.

ANN’s secondary account, @AnimeNewsNet, has not been affected by the cyber attack.

 

This was not the first time that there has been an attempt to hack ANN’s primary Twitter account.

ANN Chief Executive Officer Christopher Macdonald revealed in July 2015 that there has been an attempt to hack the @Anime account, but he was immediately notified by the social media site of the attempt.

 

UPDATE (10:21pm PHT): Anime News Network Associate Editor Jacob Chapman has announced on his Twitter account that they will be using animenewsnetwork.cc, “… while we deal with the breach.”

 

Developing Story. We will bring you more updates as soon as it becomes available.

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