Fake News Sites - Negative SEO Attack?

For the past few months, I noticed 'fake news' sites linking to my site.
It's gotten to the point where we have several hundred links from these low quality fake news sites.

They all have similar layouts and the same categories.

Here are some examples:
inewstoday.net/2017/12/why-you-should-want-to-trade-the-charles-schwab-corporation/
billsinsider.com/2016/12/11/251597-how-the-dow-jones-industrial-average-finished-friday/
thevillagessuntimes.com/2017/11/24/the-charles-schwab-corporation-schw-holdings-trimmed-by/
clicklancashire.com/2017/05/12/snap-reports-2-2bn-loss-in-q1-slams-facebook.html

All these sites link out to a ton of authority sites like CNBC, NY Times, etc.
The Whois is the same for many of them (bottom 3 are identical owners in the sample set above)

1. Is this a negative SEO attack?

2. What benefit do they get from linking to us/ what's the point of this? Trying to look legit for Google by linking to quality sites?

Whois is same for all links you shared and you joined today to post this. Can anyone connect the dots ?

DantheGMan said:

2. What benefit do they get from linking to us/ what's the point of this? Trying to look legit for Google by linking to quality sites?

Click to expand...

What is your site (roughly)? I'm guessing you don't run the BBC.

DantheGMan said:

1. Is this a negative SEO attack?

Click to expand...

Seems doubtful. But it's hard to tell without knowing what kind of site you run and in what context they're linking to you.

It's one of the higher authority sites linked in the examples above.

Anyway, the anchor text of the links vary and its mostly for general keywords.

If it's not a negative SEO play, why create hundreds of these crappy low-traffic sites and then link to quality sites?

This is Negative SEO.

Fake news? I am highly doubt it though, his website full of adsense ads, maybe he just pretend to be legit to link out.

Or maybe he found a SEO secret? Maybe lol.....

Thanks for your responses... wanted to check if anyone has come across something similar before