Cox Media radio and television stations hit by 'ransomware' attack

AppleInsider

Live news programming on many Cox Media stations have been affected by an alleged ransomware attack, which saw TV and radio broadcasts disrupted.

At least many Cox radio stations are still unable to stream audio live

A number of Cox Media-owned TV and radio stations were taken off air on Thursday, June 3, and many radio stations remain unavailable online. The Cox Media Group has not commented officially, but reports claim that the media conglomerate was targeted by ransomware.

According to media publication The Record, which regularly reports on ransomware attacks, the incident took out solely the Cox live streams. The company's websites were otherwise unaffected.

"This morning we were told to shut down everything and log out our emails to ensure nothing spread," an unnamed Cox employee told The Record. "According to my friends at affiliate stations, we shut things down in time to be safe and should be back up and running soon."

The outage affected other companies which relay livestreams from Cox, such as Hulu. Responding to viewer complaints on Twitter, Hulu support said "there's currently an issue with the feed" which was being investigated.

The Record also quote two tweets from Cox hosts, Brent Martineau and Will Bradley, which referred to the incident. Bradley's said the live news was off-air "due to a reported cyber attack."

However, both Bradley's and Martineau's tweets have since been removed.

The Cox Media Group owns a reported 57 radio and television stations across the States. AppleInsider can confirm that at least multiple television stations are streaming live again, but all Cox radio stations tested remain unavailable.

There is no indication of who is behind the alleged ransomware attack, nor what methods were used. However, it comes after the US Federal Government has warned about increased ransomware exploiting a Microsoft Exchange vulnerability.

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bakerzdosen

As someone who has had their whole company shut down for days because of a ransomware attack, and has worked with Cox Media in the past (and still has friends who work there in I.T.) I feel for all those involved. The next 2 weeks will probably be some of the worst they've experienced, and the next year or so won't be pleasant.

ITGUYINSD

Had a brief moment of jubilation when I thought it read "Fox" instead of "Cox"...

cia

ITGUYINSD said:

Had a brief moment of jubilation when I thought it read "Fox" instead of "Cox"...

The Russians won't attack their own.  Fox News is safe.

sflocal

There's a special place in hell for the coders and enablers of these attacks.

I know one company that got hit hard by ransomeware.  They were shut down for weeks.  They were more concerned about keeping it quiet for fear their customers would find out and jump ship.

jimh2

The bigger question beyond why attack Cox is why have the name Cox for a company. 

22july2013

Hopefully some day companies will learn it's NOT cost effective to use the same system for internet access as you use for protecting your internal data and hardware. And there should be no ports (eg, USB) on your internal systems (some companies even disable the ports in their Internet terminals.) Does macOS have a reliable way for admins to disable all the user's ports?