Sinclair Broadcast Group, which operates dozens of television stations across the United States, said Monday that some of its servers and workstations were encrypted with ransomware and data was stolen from the company’s network.
The company said it began investigating on Saturday and Sunday and found that some of its offices and operational networks were disrupted.
Based in Hunt Valley, Maryland, the company owns or operates 21 regional sports networks and owns, operates, or services 185 television stations in 86 markets.
The broadcast group did not immediately announce the number of directly affected television stations.
WZTV in Nashville, Tennessee announced on its website on Monday about a “serious technical problem” with a television station affecting its content streaming capabilities.
“Currently, we don’t have access to our emails or phone calls to the station,” he said.
Sinclair has taken steps to contain the breach and said the investigation is ongoing. However, he said data breaches could and could continue to cause confusion in some parts of the business, including aspects of local advertising by local broadcasters. The company said it is working to restore its business.
Sinclair said he couldn’t determine if a data breach would have a significant impact on business, operations, or financial results.
Ransomware attacks, in which cybercriminals encrypt organization data and demand payments to decrypt it, are becoming increasingly tragic in the United States.The Biden administration has promised to disrupt and prosecute criminal networks like those that attacked Major pipelines in the United States May company. The attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which led to a gas shortage along the East Coast, resulted from a gang of Russian-based cybercriminals.
According to the US government, ransomware payments reached more than $ 400 million worldwide in 2020 and exceeded $ 81 million in the first quarter of 2021.
Crane Hassold, director of threat intelligence at Abnormal Security, said the hackers behind the ransomware attack on Sinclair could have broke into the company’s systems some time ago.
“In many recent ransomware attacks, the first access that triggered the attack usually occurs weeks ago, if not months,” he said.
In recent years, several media have been hit by ransomware attacks. Cox Media Group, a leading media conglomerate, recently said it was the target of a ransomware attack earlier this year. And in 2019, the ransomware attack temporarily turned off the weather channel.
Sinclair shares fell about 3.3% in the afternoon trading.
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Sinclair investigates weekend data breaches and finds ransomware | Entertainment
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