RYUK ransomware is said to have disrupted the US Newspaper distribution from California and Florida on Saturday last week. Thus, the cyber attack which appeared to have originated outside the United States is said to have led to a 4-hour delay in the distribution of news editions related to Times, the Tribune, the Sun and other news resources majorly operating from Los Angeles.
Sources say that the news sharing network services of Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times were majorly hit by the virus attack disrupting the news distribution in entire West Coast.
An investigation launched by Tribune Publishing which also owns the Chicago Tribune and the SUN said that the malware could have impacted the back office publish and production servers on Friday.
Since the corrupted files on Tribune Publishing database contained an extension of “.ryk” RYUK ransomware is expected to be the culprit in causing the news distribution delay said, Ms. Kollias.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Katie Waldman said that DHS is aware of the situation and was busy studying it.
Currently, we cannot comment on the situation without verifying the facts. But it appears to be a foreign country’s involvement said, Ms. Waldman.
The representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were informed about the ransomware attack on the newspaper publications on early hours of Sunday and are currently unavailable for comment.
