San Francisco based KQED Radio Station is said to be suffering from a massive ransomware attack since one month. And as per the report published by The San Francisco Chronicle, the infection began on June 15th disrupting critical systems at the National Radio Member station.
KQED which happens to be the biggest radio station in the said region is now left without any email correspondence and reporters are using print our scripts in order to continue the day to day operations of the radio station.
An initial damage estimate said that the attack was very severe as it locked down hard drives, erased pre-recorded segments and brought down the operations of the radio station’s internal server to a halt.
As per the sources reporting to our Cybersecurity Insiders, KQED online broadcast was offline for more than 18 hours on June 16th, 2017 and the FM radio broadcast was facing technical difficulties due to the attack from past one month. As the Wi-Fi system remained offline until early July, the staff of the radio station was being asked to access the internet over their mobile devices.
The intensity of the ransomware attack was so severe that the radio personnel returned to timing segments with a stopwatch, as the content management systems were offline- a practice which was in place some 20 years ago.
According to the station head, hackers are demanding thousands of dollars to decrypt each file, and so the station authorities are looking for alternatives. The head of the station said that the ransomware which encrypted their systems was not WannaCry or NotPetya and was a different version on an overall note.
Note- KQED is a San Francisco based commercial media network which offers television, radio, digital media and educational services. It helps in changing lives for the better and helps individuals and communities achieve their full potential.
