Media group Inter Media Group under virus attack

The media group Inter Media Group, like several other media outlets, on June 27 sustained a virus attack. “Detector Media” was informed about it by the director of the company “National Information Systems” (NIS), which prepares news for TV channel “Inter”, Oleksander  Pylypets. According to him, the channel already resumed preparing news bulletins in full runtime. “We are now restoring everything. The situation is under control. Only the captioning system is still down, it is difficult to restore it. We still don't know the scope of damage, as we are still in the process of restoring all the data: even our archive servers were affected. But we are still able to broadcast. So we will”, informed Oleksander Pylypets.

According to him, the broadcasting of “Inter” on June 27 did not interrupt. “The only thing that we made the evening news bulletin on 6 p.m. somewhat shorter as we were preparing it literally by hand, with pens and paper, preparing and editing the news stories... We were lucky we have people who know how to do it old-school.... So, now the news bulletins run with the usual running time, although not all the equipment is up and running”, Pylypets said.

Overall, besides personal desktops, the technological and broadcasting servers, the data processing server, and the captioning machine were affected.

Pylypets believes it will be impossible to find how the virus found its way into the media group's computer network: “How are we to identify which computer got it first? I think it was all of them at the same time. There is a hypothesis that the virus had been making its way inside the system fоr months -- some infected files being sent here and there, and then the virus was activated all over on one day”.

As IMI reported, on June 27 the virus Petya affected the media holding of the TV and Radio Company «Lux», which includes the TV channel “24”, the national network of radio stations “Radio Lux” and “Radio Maksymum”, as well as several websites.

The virus also affected the TV channels “Kyiv” and ATR, TV and Radio Company “Chornomorska”, and the TV channel “DoTebe”.

The editions “Korrespondent” and “KP v Ukraine”, which belong to the Ukrainian Media Holding, also reported temporary problems in operation due to the hacker attack.  

The work computer of Kropyvnytskyi media outlets “Kirovohradska Pravda” and “Narodne Slovo” were affected by the hacker attack with the virus Petya on June 27.

The editorial office of the Rivne TV channel “RTV” was affected by the virus Petya.