NY Daily News, LA Times and San Deigo Union Tribune Suffer Post-Ransomware Infection
Major news publications across the United States were halted over the weekend due to a suspected ransomware attack. Tribune Publishing, responsible for printing several major newspapers like Chicago Tribune, LA Times, San Diego Union Tribune, NY Daily News, and the Baltimore Sun, suffered a cyber attack on Saturday, December 29th. However, every newspaper was not impacted in the same way. Some versions were able to be printed, but with subsections missing, others were not able to be distributed whatsoever.
The LA Times cited an inside source who claimed the printing outage was caused by an infection with the Ryuk ransomware. Although, others were not as quick to confirm ransomware was indeed the culprit. Ryuk ransomware is known to target high profile organizations that cannot afford a long amount of downtime. By targeting these businesses, the likelihood of reaching a payout is far greater.
The ransom demand remains unknown. However, considering systems were restored rather quickly — it wouldn’t be surprising if the publishing giant paid the ransom demands to restore functionality of its business operations.
Tribune Publishing does not believe any employee or customer data was compromised as a result of the cyber attack.
