Last Updated on 22/11/2021 by Sunaina
Sinclair Broadcast Group revealed that it was the victim of a ransomware cyberattack over the weekend. According to Sinclair, attackers have also taken data from the company’s network.
On October 16, 2021, the Company detected and began investigating a potential security problem, as well as taking efforts to contain it. The company discovered that some computers and workstations in its environment had been infected with ransomware, and that certain office and operational networks had been affected. Data was also obtained through the Company’s network. Based on its examination, the Company is trying to identify what information the data included and will take further steps as necessary.
The Sinclair Broadcast Group broadcast television company’s TV stations were down across the US over the weekend, according to several reports, and the outage was caused by a ransomware assault, according to BleepingComputer. Its activities include 185 Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, and The CW-affiliated television stations (plus 21 regional sports network brands), with about 620 channels in 87 cities across the United States (amounting to almost 40 percent of all US households).
This is the second incident that has affected Sinclair’s TV stations. The first occurred in July 2021, when the firm ordered all Sinclair stations to change passwords “as soon as possible” following a security compromise.
According to sources, these severe technical difficulties were triggered by a ransomware attack. The attackers were able to affect several TV stations by exploiting Sinclair’s corporate Active Directory domain.
According to BleepingComputer, they also took down Active Directory services for the domain, causing widespread disruption throughout the business and affiliates by restricting access to domain resources throughout the network.
Several business assets, including email servers, broadcasting, and newsroom technology, were destroyed in the event, requiring TV stations to set up Gmail accounts to accept news tips from people and to utilise PowerPoint for newscast visuals.
While localised sports networks were mostly unaffected by the event, there are allegations that local NFL games were substituted with national sports programming in several US areas (such as bowling).
Because of the continued problems, several stations have been forced to turn to live Facebook broadcasts instead of their usual newscasts, while others have had to postpone evening newscasts entirely.
