Will the next wave of big cyberattacks be targeting news stations?

Cyber criminals have steadily attacked American schools, businesses, and hospitals with ransomware for several years. But over the past few months cyber attacks have become a very publicized event for a good reason. The targets for these attacks have had no correlation, making it hard to judge what industries will be targeted next. The common variable in recent attacks is the motive, which has of course been money. Both the Colonial Pipeline and JBS Foods International were recently involved in largely publicized cyber attacks that had extremely negative effects on U.S citizens.

Since Thursday at least three news stations have been forced offline entirely in what experts say appears to be a ransomware attack on their parent company. WFTV in Orlando, Florida, and WSOC in Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as WPXI in Pittsburgh, all of which are both owned by the Cox Media Group, were told by managers last Thursday to shut down all company computers and phones. "We are only able to communicate with each other over personal phones and text messages," - Claimed an anonymous WFTV employee.

The affected stations have been able to still put together local broadcasts, but have reportedly been limited in what they can do. Cox didn't comment further on the issue. But the event is just the latest U.S. incident of ransomware, where hackers will infect a network and hold its files hostage while demanding payment. "An ‘IT incident’ that spans multiple organizations in a company is almost always a ransomware attack" said Allan Liska, an analyst at the cybersecurity company Recorded Future.