For the second time in five years, Townsquare Media has been the victim of a cyberattack.
A hacker collective known as ALPHV has taken credit for gaining unauthorized access to a significant amount of data belonging to the company in late June. The Cyber Express reports that ALPHV claimed they pulled 251GB of the company’s data including files sourced from the company’s servers and workstations. We have also learned that some stations lost their music libraries and produced commercials among the content seized by the hackers. The hackers told Townsquare, “Only files created within the past year were selected for download. You have 7 days to get in touch with us and resolve this misunderstanding to prevent data leakage from your company. If you continue to remain silent, we will be forced to publicly release all of your data.”
Townsquare was one of the many radio group operators to be hit by a cyberattack in 2019. Multiple markets were hit then with cryptolocker encryption malware that took the station operations down.
ALPHV #ransomware group added Townsquare Media Inc to their victim list. They claim to have access to 251GB of company data.#USA #alphv #blackcat #darkweb #deepweb pic.twitter.com/fMU9UE70SZ
— FalconFeeds.io (@FalconFeedsio) July 4, 2023
A similar attack also affected Amaturo Sonoma Media in Santa Rosa CA last week.
On Thursday, June 29th, four of the company’s stations were forced off the air by the ransomware attack for half the day. Country “Froggy 92.9” KFGY, Classic Rock “97.7 The River” KVRV, CHR “Hot 101.7” KHTH, and News/Talk 1350 KSRO replaced their programming temporarily with a loop of filler music and a message from company President/GM Michael O’Shea stating, “This station, and others in our radio group, has become the latest victim of a damaging, malicious, and intentional illegal server hack. That is why we are hearing programming interruptions and awkward stumbles from time to time. Our engineering and IT team are rebuilding our entire digital infrastructure. We will not negotiate with these ruthless offshore pirates. We appreciate your understanding in our most unfortunate hour and thank you for listening to our rebuild, which will hopefully be completed this weekend.”
Not all of Amaturo’s services are back online as the affected stations are still not streaming, nor are they able to switch to satellite-delivered programming.
