[An update on this story with new information is posted here.]
All Marketron services went offline over the weekend due to a “cyber event,” reportedly a ransomware attack, and they remained down most of Monday.
The company posted workarounds to try to help clients impeded by the situation. Also, as of late Monday afternoon, service was back up for customers of RadioTraffic, which had been taken down as a precautionary measure.
Marketron wrote on its website that it was unsure of the root cause of the cyber problem and was using a security firm to resolve it.
But the trade publication Inside Radio quoted CEO Jim Howard saying the Russian criminal organization BlackMatter was responsible for the attack. That organization has been in the news for other recent alleged attacks including one this weekend on a grain cooperative.
Marketron wrote early Monday on its website that it had invested heavily in recent years “to prevent a situation like this.”
It is a significant outage, given that the company serves approximately 6,000 media organizations and, according to its website, manages $5 billion in annual U.S. advertising revenue.
The company’s products include sales and traffic management software tools used by broadcast and media organizations.
Services that remained offline late on Monday included Marketron Traffic, Visual Traffic Cloud, Exchange and Advertiser Portal. The company said it had decided to take down RepPak as well “out of an abundance of caution.” Its Pitch platform, Email Marketing and Mobile messaging were not affected.
“Marketron and an industry leading third-party cybersecurity firm are working around the clock to restore service. Our only priority as a business is to get your business up and running. We hope to have a better sense of timelines on Monday morning.
“We understand that any impact to your business is unacceptable.”
