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.
Hahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm kind of glad cryptocurrencies weren't outlawed it time to prevent this, couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of fascists!
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What happens when people start doing it for shits and giggles, you know for the decades before there was crypto.
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It'd be an extremely rare issue, you know like the decades before there was crypto.
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Yep, those golden years of no viruses or worms like code red spreading wild. Pepperidge Farms remembers.
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Pepperidge Farms also remembers where the goalposts were. Ransomware was a vanishingly rare phenomenon.
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They all spread via the same methods.
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That's like saying that the common cold and ebola spread via the same methods. Technically true, but one is far more dangerous than the other.
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Re: Hahahaha (Score:2)
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.
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The only thing you can reasonably blame on cryptocurrencies is attempted secret transactions, what they're designed for & targeted towards.
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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
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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.
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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.
GOODEVENING HBO (Score:2)
GOODEVENING HBO
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95/MONTH ?
NO WAY !
[SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]
Net boon (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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!
Re: You might want to... (Score:2)
This article is not about Nexstar.
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Re:Net boon (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess this is also a good point to bring up the fact Democrats in the US are actually much more in favor of freedom of speech than Republicans. Unlike Democrats, who just tend to publicly shame people for speech they don't like (which is, itself, protected free speech), Republicans are more than happy to prevent teachers from teaching topics such as evolution, to actually censor school books, and even remove them from school libraries.
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How do you figure? In the US mainstream media (pretty much EVERY network and social media besides Fox) is:
gun control - For heavy gun control
taxes - For Higher taxes
abortion - Pro Abortion, even VERY late term.
death penalty - Against
insurance - Err, not really mentioned on media, n
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I'm sure you can document these claims.
we'll wait...
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I"m guessing you don't live here.
if you did, you'd not have to ask such a silly question with such an obvious answer.
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To be fair, the original poster said he was not from America
And YES most of the issues you raise are complete non-issues in other Western countries
This is for a variety of issues
1. Gun ownership is not a fetish in most countries as it is in America
2. Most countries do not have a 'gun lawsuit generating organization', such as the NRA which exists primarily to keep gun sales up
3. Tax rates are also less of an issue, since most people expect to pay taxes when they are receiving services
4. Abortion, your insist
Re: Net boon (Score:2)
As an American, you can just call my country "the upside down".
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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”.
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Upvote this again.
If I was ever on the side of Ransomware attackers it would be in this case.
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Agreed. Couldn't happen to a more appropriate nest of evil. SinkLair? Let's hope.
Did we really need FAILARMY TV? (Score:2)
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
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And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Informative)
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I discovered that between NBC's cable and broadcast channels, there's an episode of Law and Order: Special Victim Unit on the air at all times in most areas of the USA. Participating networks include ion and USA Network.
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No, it is merely the truth, Sinclair is dog doodoo.
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For ransom? How gauche. Do it for STYLE (Score:3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Fuck football and nascar turn-left idiocy (Score:1)
Don't tie locals to RSN channels (Score:2)
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.
Re:Don't tie locals to RSN channels (Score:4, Funny)
"Basic tears" - Oh, how close to truth you are here...
("Tiers" for non-English first language people...)
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Not much Sinclair around where I am, but if they aren't broadcasting a signal anywhere they have an FCC license, start a 24:00:00.0 clock until the station's license is forfeited to by FCC Rules.
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That sounds like a dream, is it real?
If it is real I‘d expect excellent IT security and recovery plans.
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It happened to California in the Enron crisis... but the Congress gave everything back in the restoration.
Whoever helps Sinclair (Score:4, Informative)
Whoever helps Sinclair fixing their systems should go to hell to admin their Windows ME for all eternity.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer group (Score:5, Insightful)
These are no innocent victims.
Such gloating, much wow (Score:1, Insightful)
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
Bring it on, my good doge (Score:1)
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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...with no visible damage to Cox's signals at the time.
I wonder, if Sinclair's problem was that the accounting machines running QuickBooks got hit, therefore the bean counters ordered the systems down because there would be no way to get ad money counted.
Broadcast systems are known to be running non-standard OSs based on Windows or Linux with exemptions from blue screen errors and kernel panics. If ransomware gets past these things, were a short distance from the criminal telethon seeking crypto payments.