American Radio Relay League confirms $1 million ransom payment

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) confirmed it paid a $1 million ransom to obtain a decryptor to restore systems encrypted in a May ransomware attack.

After discovering the incident, the National Association for Amateur Radio took impacted systems offline to contain the breach. One month later, it said its network was hacked by a “malicious international cyber group” in a “sophisticated network attack.”

ARRL later alerted impacted individuals via data breach notification letters that it detected a “sophisticated ransomware incident” on May 14 after its computer systems were encrypted. In a July filing with the Office of Maine’s Attorney General, ARRL said the resulting data breach affected only 150 employees.

While the organization has not yet linked the attack to a specific ransomware operation, sources told BleepingComputer that the Embargo ransomware gang was behind the breach.

ARRL also said in the breach notifications that they’ve already taken “all reasonable steps to prevent [..] data from being further published or distributed,” which was interpreted at the time as a veiled confirmation that a ransom was or will likely be paid.

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