NASCAR team’s data locked up by ransomware; Circle Sport-Leavine Family Racing paid the ransom

Nick Bromberg reports that Circle Sport Leavine Family Racing fell victim to a ransomware attack this Spring after their files got locked up on Dropbox.

“First you don’t want to believe it, but every file I tried to open had the same thing,” Dave Winston, the team’s crew chief told Fox Sports. “You know in this sport, the computers have so much information on them, whether it’s track data or wind-tunnel data, engine data, personnel issues, parts issues — all sorts of information.”

The team fields the No. 95 for Michael McDowell and Ty Dillon. It has an alliance with Richard Childress Racing and the team told Fox the data, including aerodynamic info, setup notes and more, was valued at $2 million and would have taken 1,500 hours to recreate.

Read more on Yahoo! Sports. The team paid $500 in bitcoin. Luckily for them, they weren’t at a track where there would likely be no BTC ATM.

Catalin Cimpanu reports on Softpedia that it was TeslaCrypt ransomware. And in a lemons to lemonade ending, Malwarebytes, who CSLFR reached out to for help, wound up becoming a team sponsor.