The Reuters news agency has fallen victim to computer hackers for the third time in a fortnight, with the latest incident involving an article that falsely claimed Saudi Arabia's foreign minister had died.
Reuters said unknown hackers illegally gained access to one of its journalist's blogs on Wednesday. The hackers then published a hoax story claiming the death of Saudi prince Saud al-Faisal.
It is the third time that Reuters's publishing systems have been compromised in a fortnight.
Hackers first targeted Reuters on 3 August, when they published a false interview with a Syrian rebel leader. Two days later the Reuters Technology Twitter account was hijacked by hackers who began to publish pro-Syrian government messages.
Reuters, one of the world's most trusted news agencies, is now facing mounting questions about the security of its publishing platform following the latest incident on Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for Reuters confirmed the security breach and said the company would release more information when available.
Reuters uses the WordPress blogging platform, used by several news organisations and blogs.
Mark Jaquith, a member of the WordPress security team, told the Wall Street Journal after the first hack in August that Reuters used an outdated version of the blogging system that had "publicly known security issues".
"If organisations ignore those notifications and stay on an outdated version, then they put themselves at risk of these sorts of breaches," Jaquith said.
It is possible that hackers managed to obtain the password for the Reuters Twitter account when they gained access to its WordPress system.
Reuters briefly took its blogging platform offline following the first incident as it attempted to fix the security flaws.
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