https://web.archive.org/web/20151115191248/http://www.nytime...
"The attackers are believed to have communicated using encryption technology, according to European officials who had been briefed on the investigation but were not authorized to speak publicly. It was not clear whether the encryption was part of widely used communications tools, like WhatsApp, which the authorities have a hard time monitoring, or something more elaborate. Intelligence officials have been pressing for more leeway to counter the growing use of encryption."
NYT didn't seem to pass it as anything else than it is. What's your logic here? Should all anonymous sources be banned? Or only the sources with opinions that you don't like?
Should the NYT report that a UFO passed over because some official told them so? No.
When you receive an anonymous tip, its your job as a journalist to try and confirm it, not report it directly.
Additionally, when a paper reports something with no evidence and screws up, they usually publish a retraction, not change the article and direct you to a new copy.
Here is the NY Times Standard and Ethics Statement, which describes the newspaper's "distaste" for anonymous sources:
http://www.nytco.com/who-we-are/culture/standards-and-ethics...
In fact, that's probably the reason it was pulled: a complaint was made to the NYT Public Editor about the piece's sources.