Hackers disabled US radio stations Sonoma Media Group

media company Amaturo Sonoma Media Group June 29 was the victim of a devastating cyberattack due to which the work of 4 out of 8 radio stations of the company – KSRO, Froggy 92.9, 97.7 The River and HOT 101.7 – was stopped for 6 hours.

The radio transmitters continued to function, but without sound, leaving the stations off the air for about 6 hours, causing a series of failures and significant financial losses. The company decided not to negotiate with the hackers and restore its servers on its own.

The other stations of the company (KZST 100.1, The Wolf 102.7, The Bull 99.1 and Oldies 107.9) were not affected because they operate on a separate server. Radio station Jazzy 93.7 KJZY FM was also not affected. KJZY transferred 15% of the rights to sell to Amaturo, but the station is still owned by Redwood Empire Stereocasters.

Amaturo is now restoring four affected stations using data from an old server that went offline last December.

The hackers demanded the company’s financial records, but Amaturo refused to comply with the attackers’ demands. “We will examine your financial, banking and income statements, your savings, investments, and present you with our reasonable demand after reviewing them”the cybercriminals wrote in a ransom note.

According to an Amaturo spokesperson, there is no evidence that Amaturo was the specific target of the attack, however, according to the California Association of Broadcasters, the media are becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Amaturo also lost 9 years of email history as a result of the attack, however, Amaturo’s main accounting system and commercial scheduling system are stored in the cloud, which avoided catastrophic data loss. Amaturo said that the loss of these systems would be almost fatal, in which case the company would have to pay a ransom.