MICHAEL MCDOWELL (CIRCLE SPORT LEAVINE FAMILY RACING).
THE TEAM HAS RECENTLY BEEN ATTACKED BY A RANSOMWARE
IT environment and executing malicious code
that then encodes digital files with encryption
that can only be unlocked by someone who
knows the password: the hackers.
According to analysis, based on Kaspersky Security Network statistics, in one
year the number of attacks increased more
than fivefold from 131,111 attempts to infect users in 2014–2015 to 718,536 in
2015–2016.
So this problem is growing, and won’t be
going away anytime soon…
A recent example of this from within motorsport was the encryption of the data of
motorsport team Circle Sport-Leavine Family
Racing who runs the No. 59 NASCAR.
They noticed that a machine on their network was loading many of their documents to
DropBox where they hold all their digital files.
When the team leader went to open these
files some time later he found that they had
all been encrypted and a screen popped up
telling him he needed to pay a ransom to decrypt their files.