Yeshiva World News in New York hit by defacement

Brooklyn-based Yeshiva World News was defaced Wednesday with pro-Iran imagery, knocking the Orthodox Jewish outlet’s homepage offline and leaving it on a maintenance page hours later.

The Jerusalem Post reported that visitors saw a Farsi message saying the attackers were in control, alongside imagery of Ruhollah Khomeini, Ali Khamenei and Mojtaba Khamenei.

A screenshot published by The Jerusalem Post shows the apparent defacement of Yeshiva World News with pro-Iran imagery and Farsi text that translates roughly to, “We are now in control. Dirty Zionists,” during the Wednesday disruption.

The public impact appeared to be the loss of normal website access. The Jerusalem Post reported that by 2 p.m. ET the site displayed, “we will be back shortly,” a message DysruptionHub also observed on the homepage.

Yeshiva World News did not respond to an emailed request for comment. It was not immediately clear whether the outlet’s communications systems were also affected.

A DysruptionHub screenshot shows Yeshiva World News displaying the message, “WE WILL BE BACK SHORTLY,” after the site was defaced Wednesday.

Attribution remains unconfirmed. The Jerusalem Post said it did not immediately find an Iranian hacker group claiming responsibility, even though the defacement used pro-Iran imagery and messaging. Reuters separately reported that a Feb. 28 Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment warned Iran-aligned hacktivists could carry out low-level attacks on U.S. networks, including website defacements and distributed denial-of-service attacks.

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Yeshiva World News has dealt with prior disruptions. In an Oct. 3, 2023, post, the outlet said overseas hackers temporarily took the site down, calling it the second such incident in 20 years. In June 2024, it told readers a separate 18-hour outage was caused by a server host failure.

Cyber disruptions have hit other U.S. media organizations in the past year, from the February 2025 attack on Lee Enterprises that disrupted newspaper operations across 26 states to a July 2025 distributed denial-of-service attack on the Florida Trident and its watchdog parent, and an October 2025 technical outage at Bristol Broadcasting stations in Charleston, West Virginia, that affected streams, phones and some studio functions. Compared with those cases, the known impact at Yeshiva World News appears narrower so far and centered on its public-facing website.

Founded in 2003, Yeshiva World News is an English-language site aimed at Orthodox Jewish readers in the United States and Israel.

The outlet has not said whether the incident was limited to its public-facing homepage or affected publishing, advertising or user systems, and it was not immediately clear when full service would return.

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