cyber attacks

Ajit Pai says he doubted claims the FCC’s comment system had been taken down by a cyberattack, but was asked to keep quiet until a full report was made public.

The FCC on Monday said that a cyberattack on its comment system that it claimed had taken place last year never actually happened. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued a statement saying the agency’s former CIO provided “inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress and the American people.”

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. prosecutors say a member of an Iran-based hacking group tried to extort HBO out of $6 million in digital currency by stealing unaired episodes and […]

Each network has its own system for delivering screeners to TV critics and reporters — from physical DVDs to videos hosted on their press sites. But as piracy concerns mount, those methods are changing in favor of more secure alternatives.

NEW YORK (AP) — HBO says it has regained control of its social media accounts after the latest security breach to hit the entertainment company. The hacking group OurMine on […]

As if the Time Warner-owned cable network didn’t have enough problems to worry about with cyberattacks, a notorious hacking group took over the company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts Wednesday night. “Hi, OurÙŽMiÙŽne are here, we are just testing your security ,HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security – ourmine .org -> Contact,” read a message on both social platforms at approximately 8 p.m. PT. OurMine is well known for taking over Twitter accounts of a wide range of media accounts in recent years including Netflix, Marvel and Google.

After hackers leaked on Sunday several episodes of HBO’s upcoming Curb Your Enthusiasm and, among others, Sunday’s episode of Insecure, HBO says it will not “play” the hacker’s game. In a statement, HBO said, “We are not in communication with the hacker and we’re not going to comment every time a new piece of information is released.”

Time Warner’s HBO last month offered $250,000 to cyber criminals who hacked into its computer system, asking them to extend a deadline for paying a much larger ransom, according to an email reviewed by Reuters. The note said that HBO was willing to make the payment “as a show of good faith,” but needed time to fund an account for sending payments in bitcoin digital currency or obtain account information from the hackers so it could use a conventional bank wire to transmit the funds.

In a swaggering five-minute video from “Mr. Smith” to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, the hackers used white text scrolling on a black background to deliver an ultimatum. In short: Pay up within three days or see the group, which claims to have stolen 1.5 terabytes of HBO shows and confidential corporate data, upload entire series and sensitive proprietary files.

An email purported to be from the hacker or hackers behind the HBO breach is making a fresh wave of threats against the network. While the sender of the email appeared to use a pseudonym, the sender offered evidence of hacked materials to buttress the claim.

The network said in an internal memo that it did not believe its email system was compromised. The scope of the stolen materials, which include show episodes, is unknown.

The company is reeling from a sophisticated cyberattack that potentially compromised seven times the amount of data stolen in the Sony hack as the FBI investigates potential culprits.

Chairman and CEO Richard Plepler confirmed that some of the network’s original programming, including episodes of Ballers and Room 104, was stolen as part of the cyber attack.

While all businesses must be vigilant, media companies seem to be in the crosshairs for cyberattacks lately. In the past few months alone, attackers have hacked into several broadcasters’ audio streaming devices as well as perpetrating other types of cyber vandalism. So what can media companies do to minimize the costs of a cyberattack, which include damage to the organization’s reputation? Here are six suggestions from cybersecurity experts.

Experts spell out three actions to assess a station’s cyber security risks and offer eight recommendations for performing basic risk management and “cyber security hygiene.”

Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on security upgrades, U.S. media organizations have failed to properly protect their newsrooms from cyber attacks on their websites, communications systems and even editing platforms — opening themselves up to the possibility of a chaos-creating hack around Election Day.

Cyber breaches come with their own financial and operational considerations. A cyber-attack can mean significant and costly interruptions to business. Here’s a multi-pronged strategy for developing an incident response plan in the increasingly likely event your station suffers a data breach/hack.

A group of hackers said the attack, which shut down the broadcaster’s digital services for a few hours on Thursday, was intended as a test of its own abilities.

When TV broadcasters rebuild their transmission systems for ATSC 3.0 or the repack over the next several years, they will be tempted to integrate the Internet into the control and monitoring functions. It will likely make things easier and save both labor and money. They should think twice. If the experts are right and there is no way to absolutely secure anything directly or indirectly tied to the Internet, stations might be smart to isolate the transmission system from the Internet so they can always be on the air when they need to be.

While politically motivated hacks such as the ones that may have disrupted France’sTV5Monde and WBOC Salisbury, Md., are scary, they aren’t likely to be typical. Stations and networks are more likely to be hit by garden variety malware and malicious code intrusions because where there is IP, there is vulnerability. An area of particular security concern to broadcasters is the nation’s Emergency Alert System, which is increasingly dependent on networked and IP-based services.

The risk of cyber crime affects organizations large and small. No business is immune to the expense and downtime that can be a result of a cyber virus or, as we have seen in the high-profile cases, the piracy of information about employees and customers. Here are eight top cyber security issues that should concern all of us.

Last week we witnessed the repercussions of a cyber-attack on American business interests like we have never seen before. This series of events shows that not only any company is vulnerable to cyber-invasion, but that existing security methodologies need to improve to combat this threat. And it’s not just Sony — it also has happened with banks.