Hackers Take Down The New York Times - And The Wall Street Journal Immediately Pounces

The New York Times was the victim Tuesday of what a spokeswoman called most likely a "malicious external attack" — its second outage over the past two weeks.

Eileen Murphy, the Times' vice president of corporate communications, confirmed in a statement that the company was viewing the situation as a result of a hack.

"Our initial assessment is that this is most likely the result of a malicious external attack," Murphy said.

As it did last time, the Wall Street Journal immediately pounced on the news to offer online readers a chance to browse the site for free:

Free read @WSJ paywall is down

— WSJ Communications (@WSJPR) August 27, 2013

More to come...