For the past week, we’ve been busy dealing with a malware issue on The Pappas Post website which left the site unreachable to our readers.

We hired a company called SiteLock to clean and subsequently add a second and third level of security to our existing security.

After a deep investigation into the attack, it was revealed to us that the site was attacked by Turkey-based hackers who broke through our existing firewall and embedded malware on the site.

The hackers were operating from three different coordinated locations inside Turkey, as revealed by the clean up team we hired to remove the malware.

The site was eventually blacklisted by Google and other portals (all blocks have subsequently been removed) which ultimately left you, our readers, unable to reach the website.

First– our apologies for the lapse in security. Previously, we had firewalls and security installed on the site that was described to us as “adequate” to prevent “average” hackers from accessing the site.

But obviously the levels of security we had in place were not enough for the sophisticated folks who hit us last week.

As a result, we’ve added two additional layers of cyber security which will hopefully prevent future attacks.

Our sincere apologies for this and we look forward to welcoming you back on The Pappas Post to read and share our diverse content.