Bangkok Post Hacked: Why a '136,615 Members' Claim Should Make Every Thai Company Count Its Old Data

อ่านภาษาไทย

A Newsroom Wakes Up to a Hacker's Message

On the morning of Thursday 29 October 2026, readers of the Bangkok Post, Thailand's best-known English-language daily, found something other than the news on its website. Photos on several articles had been swapped for a black image reading "Stop The War" and signed "d001", and at least one headline had been replaced with a message addressed to the paper itself: "hello bangkokpost, you've been compromised", followed by a claim of "136,615 members in hand", as documented in screenshots by the French-language news site Toute la Thaïlande.

The text the attacker inserted went further. It claimed access to the paper's database, application servers and web server, and listed counts of website members, paying subscribers, forum users and content-management accounts, including categories it labelled as "old" forum users and "old" CMS accounts, as reported the same day by Thai Hyper.

By the early afternoon, the Post had issued a statement. It said its website suffered a brief technical disruption after unauthorised content appeared on the homepage and other pages, that its technical team moved quickly to secure the site and restore normal operations, and that a thorough security review confirmed no reader information or personal data had been accessed or compromised. The paper apologised to readers and promised further updates.

Two Stories, and Only One of Them Is Confirmed

It matters to keep the two halves of this incident apart. The defacement is confirmed; the Bangkok Post acknowledged it. The data claim is not. It comes only from the attacker, no public evidence has been reported that backs it up, and the newspaper says no personal data was touched. Nothing here suggests the Post's readers should panic, and nothing in this article should be read as saying their data was taken.

Still, the shape of the claim is worth studying, because attackers write these messages to cause the most fear possible. They rarely stop at "we got in". They itemise the members, the paying customers, the forum users and the accounts from systems a company stopped using years ago. That kind of list works as a threat precisely because almost every organisation that has been online for a decade or more holds data just like it, often long after anyone has a reason to keep it.

What This Means for Your Company

• A claim alone has a cost. Even when no data leaves the building, the company loses a day or more to investigation, public statements and anxious customer messages. The faster you can show exactly what personal data you hold and where it sits, the faster you can answer with confidence.
• Old data is the easiest thing to threaten you with. Accounts from a forum you closed, users from a previous website platform, a newsletter list from a campaign that ended years ago, a test copy of the member database: data you no longer use is still data someone can steal, or claim to have stolen.
• The PDPA already expects you to let it go. Section 37 of the Personal Data Protection Act requires data controllers to have a system for erasing or destroying personal data once its retention period ends or it is no longer needed for the purpose it was collected for. Our guide to PDPA data destruction requirements explains what that means for retired hardware.
• Migrations are where old data gets left behind. When a company moves to a new platform, the old database server and its backup drives are often unplugged and kept "just in case". Switching a machine off does not remove a single record from its disks.

A Practical Old-Data Clean-Up

1. Map every place customer and member data lives: the live database, previous platforms, old forums, newsletter tools, staging and test copies, backup drives and NAS units, and laptops where staff once exported lists.
2. For each one, decide whether it is still needed, needed only for a legal retention period, or not needed at all, and write the retention period down.
3. Delete the accounts and datasets you no longer need, close dormant administrator and editor logins, and decommission the systems that held them instead of leaving them running, or switched off in a rack.
4. When that hardware leaves service, make sure its storage is properly dealt with: server data destruction for retired database and application servers, hard drive and SSD destruction for loose disks and old backup drives, all handled as a single IT asset disposal project with a certificate for every device.

For larger clear-outs, our technician can come to your Bangkok office to unrack servers and networking equipment, remove old desktops and laptops, and record a full inventory of every item taken away. Every device with storage is securely erased and certified first, with physical destruction available when a drive cannot be verified clean or your policy requires it, backed by photo and video evidence. Each device gets a Certificate of Data Destruction or Certified Erasure showing its serial number, the method and the date. We handle devices only; we do not shred paper.

The strongest answer to "we have your members" is being able to show that the old data no longer exists. Get an instant quote or call 082-797-3702, and we will make sure the drives behind your retired systems are wiped or destroyed for good, so your company never has to wonder what an attacker might find on them.

Sources: Bangkok Post, "Bangkok Post secures website following brief disruption" (29 Oct 2026); Toute la Thaïlande, "Bangkok Post piraté en Thaïlande : le journal dément la fuite de 136 615 comptes" (29 Oct 2026); Thai Hyper (Thailand Hyperlinks), report on the Bangkok Post website incident (29 Oct 2026).