1-19-2015
WAKV AM 980 in Ostego, MI, is just outside of Kalamazoo. Station owner Jim Higgs found his small market radio station had become the target to ransomware that encrypted WAKV's computers. The message on his desktop informed Higgs that if he wanted the files back, which contained the entire music library, voice tracks, jingles, promos, spots, and business records, he would have to pay the hackers $500 or lose everything.
Higgs probably fell victim to a cryptolocker variant, malware that encrypts files using RSA public-key cryptography. Cryptolocker is believed to have extorted a total of around $3 million from its victims and is usually transmitted as an attachment in email, infecting the Windows operating system. The important lesson here, Higgs tells the Michigan news website MLive, "People tell you all the time to back up everything. Until this kind of damage happens, you don't really appreciate that message."
Watch a full report on the attack on WAKV from Fox 17 in west Michigan HERE
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