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Security Technology IT

Sinclair TV Stations Disrupted Across the US After Ransomware Attack (therecord.media) 59

TV broadcasts for Sinclair-owned channels went down Sunday across the US in what the stations have described as technical issues, but which multiple sources told The Record to be a ransomware attack. From the report: The incident occurred in the early hours of the day and took down the Sinclair internal corporate network, email servers, phone services, and the broadcasting systems of local TV stations. As a result of the attack, many channels weren't able to broadcast morning shows, news segments, and scheduled NFL games, according to a barrage of tweets coming from viewers and the TV channels themselves. "Internally, it's bad," a source who had to call Sinclair employees on their personal numbers to get more details about the attack, told The Record earlier today in a private conversation.
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Sinclair TV Stations Disrupted Across the US After Ransomware Attack

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  • Hahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh.gmail@com> on Monday October 18, 2021 @11:09AM (#61903001) Journal

    I'm kind of glad cryptocurrencies weren't outlawed it time to prevent this, couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of fascists!

    • What happens when people start doing it for shits and giggles, you know for the decades before there was crypto.

      • It'd be an extremely rare issue, you know like the decades before there was crypto.

        • Yep, those golden years of no viruses or worms like code red spreading wild. Pepperidge Farms remembers.

          • Pepperidge Farms also remembers where the goalposts were. Ransomware was a vanishingly rare phenomenon.

          • by LKM ( 227954 )
            Our company's insurance premiums for ransomware just doubled from last year's. Talking to a rep of the company, he said that a double digit percentage of their clients had some kind of claim related to ransomware. Their division inside the insurance company lost money during the last fiscal year, incidents were so much higher than they predicted. That definitely was not the case at any point in time before cryptocurrencies appeared.
            • The fact you wish to blame cryptocurrency for a rise in insurance premiums is like blaming the earth's tilt for seasonal colds.

              Ransomeware exists because companies have neglected appropriate security. The fact that this type of attack is on the rise because the easy of a currency that can be utilized to be less traceable only developed a profit motive. the weakness always existed and maybe now we will address it but I won't hold my breathe because of comments like this.

            • by tchdab1 ( 164848 )

              The only thing you can reasonably blame on cryptocurrencies is attempted secret transactions, what they're designed for & targeted towards.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Most of the hacks done for shits and grins before the black hats went pro were just kids goofing around. They didn't tend to take down hospitals, major pipelines, and television networks. They preferred to put funny logos on websites and scrawl their pseudonym all over them and call it a day. Annoying and even embarrassing, but it tended to be a lot less harmful.

        The most "harmful" hack in that era was the weird "Max Headroom" broadcast in Chicago. Some of them were actually funny as long as it wasn't your s

        • Actually, Max Headroom was brought in to respond to the problem, not the source of it. He broadcast what the broadcast engineer wanted him to say, because the news team couldn't respond fast enough. The truth was WGN-TV 9 Chicago's studio-to-transmitter wireless microwave link was insecure because it was too close to too many buildings, and not high enough. Eventually a wire was run and the problem solved.

      • Some of the "HBO Disruptions" of the 80s were paid messages to communicate and hide violent/sexual scenes from kids who may have been tuning in early for Fraggle Rock. After all, there were kids waiting for NightWatch that were up at 10pm back then.

  • Net boon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @11:09AM (#61903005) Homepage

    If this lasts long enough, we might get a more informed citizenry. Sinclair programming is a cesspool of corporate shilling disguised as infotainment.

    • Re:Net boon (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh.gmail@com> on Monday October 18, 2021 @11:12AM (#61903013) Journal

      It's worse than corporate shilling, it's fascist indoctrination - remember their must-run segments included scare stories about jihadism and pro-Trump propaganda, on top of the infamous one dogwhistling about the DURN LIB'RUL MAINSTREAM MEDIA!

      • It's worse than corporate shilling, it's fascist indoctrination - remember their must-run segments included scare stories about jihadism and pro-Trump propaganda, on top of the infamous one dogwhistling about the DURN LIB'RUL MAINSTREAM MEDIA!

        You could say “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”.

    • Upvote this again.

      If I was ever on the side of Ransomware attackers it would be in this case.

    • When I was watching over-the-air TV out of a place I was staying last month, I saw a Sinclair channel called "TBD." broadcasting a marathon of FAILARMY videos. And, since this place was really technically messed up, it identified on the screen in the dial position for WGBH-TV Boston.

      Then again, nearly everybody else in the area has Xfinity cable, which isn't carrying most of the DT3/DT4/DT5 channels. Univision affiliates have a ton of English/Spanish channels who see it as better than launching a cable chan

      • by Megane ( 129182 )
        You probably need to re-scan. A company here recently moved CW onto the same transmitter as NBC for some reason. It took me some tweaking to get my MythTV updated without doing a full re-scan. (I really don't want to do that.) And I just noticed a second TBD listed on yet another channel, but with guide data that obviously isn't TBD. Gotta check that tomorrow.
  • by kunwon1 ( 795332 ) <dave.j.moore@gmail.com> on Monday October 18, 2021 @11:17AM (#61903029) Homepage
    Bunch of right wing propaganda outlets, let them burn
    • I never heard of Sinclair, so I looked them up and they have a lot of CBS stations on the list.

      Did CBS turn right wing and I missed it? Note that I have no TV reception here so I could easily have missed it.

      • by kunwon1 ( 795332 ) <dave.j.moore@gmail.com> on Monday October 18, 2021 @01:53PM (#61903631) Homepage
        Regardless of the national label attached to the local stations, they are firmly and centrally controlled by Sinclair, who uses them explicitly to spread propaganda. The corporate overlords distribute written 'news stories' that each local station is obliged to run. These 'news stories' are anything but journalism, they are pure propaganda. There is a lot written on this topic elsewhere
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Nothing is more disruptive to my DVR than the fucking stupid nfl games, or nascar left-turn idiocy.
  • Don't tie locals to RSN channels

    Dish may lose the Sinclair channels as dish really does not to be forced to put the RSN's into the basic tears with no real choice for the end user.

  • by k2r ( 255754 ) on Monday October 18, 2021 @12:25PM (#61903261)

    Whoever helps Sinclair fixing their systems should go to hell to admin their Windows ME for all eternity.

  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday October 18, 2021 @01:14PM (#61903445)

    These are no innocent victims.

  • I can't wait 'til it happens to CNN. Will there be the same gloating? The same reveling, the same dancing atop graves?

    You won't find me dancing on their graves, tho. I'll be having a brandy watching you lot lose your shit when the day finally comes that your corporate teat - CNN - is exposed as nothing more than Minitruth. Government-paid propaganda. Push that delicious Commie narrative. White man bad. Brown man stupid and unable to better self because white man (tm). Wear your piehole gag. Suburbs

    • Will there be the same gloating? The same reveling, the same dancing atop graves?

      Absolutely. Not only is CNN bad in its own right--their "reporting" is disappointing at absolute best and 24 hours news media is a problem in-and-of-itself--but their parent company, AT&T, plays a large role in the existence of One America News Network. Here's CNN itself reporting such. [cnn.com] OANN does propaganda and lying in depth whereas Sinclair does it in breadth; AT&T is a devil in its own right, to boot, without needing

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