At the end of last week, the American broadcasting corporation Sinclair Broadcast Group fell victim to a ransomware attack. As a result, Sinclair’s television broadcasts were interrupted throughout the United States.
The Sinclair Broadcast Group is a Fortune 500 (with $ 5.9 billion in annual revenue) and is the leading provider of sports and news in the United States, owning several national television networks. For example, Sinclair Broadcast Group owns and operates 21 local sports networks, 185 television stations, and several national television networks, including the Tennis Channel and Stadium.
At first, representatives of the corporation reported that the matter was in ordinary technical problems, but soon the media learned that the incident affected not only the television broadcast but also disabled the internal corporate network of Sinclair, mail servers, telephone services. Even then, many experts suspected that the cryptor was to blame.
Edition of The the Record, citing its own sources, reported that initially the attack could be isolated, but many areas Sinclair networks were linked to the same Active Directory domain, which ultimately allow an attacker to broaden the scope of the attack.
Fortunately, the incident did not affect the entire Sinclair network, which made it possible to replace some of the planned TV programs on the affected channels with others, and some channels were still able to remain on the air. Currently, work on the restoration of the regular operation of TV channels is still ongoing, and not all of them were able to return to the normal broadcasting network.
Representatives of the corporation eventually confirmed the fact of the hack and reported that the attackers had also stolen data from the company’s network. The official press release reads:
“The company found that certain servers and workstations were encrypted with ransomware and some office and operational networks were disrupted. Also, data was stolen from the company’s network ”.
It is reported that Sinclair specialists and law enforcement agencies are already investigating the incident and are trying to determine what information fell into the hands of the attackers.
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