Circle Sport Leavine Family Racing (CSLFR) suffered a major setback to their race preparations in April when the team’s computers, including the one for crew chief Dave Winston fell victim to ransomware, where a crucial subset of data was held hostage.
On Friday, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team announced a partnership with Malwarebytes, the leading advanced malware prevention and remediation solution which is now protecting all the computers within the organization.
Protected and fully operational, CSLFR and Malwarebytes have launched a partnership to help educate the public about the very real threat of ransomware to companies of all sizes, and consumers of all kinds.
“Just knowing that we could lose everything that we had worked so hard to achieve was terrifying,” said Winston, Circle Sport Leavine Family Racing crew chief in a press release. “The data that they were threatening to take from us was priceless, we couldn’t go one day without it greatly impacting the team’s future success. This was a completely foreign experience for all of us, and we had no idea what to do. What we did know was that if we didn’t get the files back, we would lose years’ worth of work valued at millions of dollars.”
Nearly two months ago, the team’s computers all of which held track data from races, as well as additional information from test facilities as well as personal information were infected by TeslaCrypt ransomware, where the hackers demanded that the CSLFR team pay a ransom within 48 hours, or their data would be erased forever.
The stolen data which contained key information that the team needed to ensure that their race cars performed at their highest level, in addition to car part lists and custom high-profile simulation set-ups, valued at nearly two million dollars.
Instead of taking nearly 1,500 man-hours to recreate the data, the team spent crucial hours acquiring 1.5 bitcoins ($500 in U.S. currency) to pay the ransom and later recovered their stolen files.
Afterward, the team diligently did their homework looking for the right partner to protect their vital information moving forward and quickly chose Malwarebytes.
“Like most companies, we felt we had solid security in place on our digital intelligence with our software and firewalls, but this is a very new threat,” said Jeremy Lange, VP at CSLFR.
“It’s an area of coverage that you don’t realize you need until it happens to you. We’re lucky that it all worked out and now having this partnership with Malwarebytes, we hope to inform NASCAR fans and the industry of this threat and the solution.”
But, the partnership has grown into more than just protecting CSLFR from further cases of malware infection. The company announced Friday that they will sponsor the No. 95 Chevrolet SS in multiple Sprint Cup races throughout the year.
The team says Malwarebytes was drawn to NASCAR because of the size of the NASCAR fan base and their loyalty to sponsors in the sport.
“We are honored to be partnering with CSLFR to emphasize to everyone including the NASCAR community that ransomware is a very real threat,” said Marcin Kleczynski, CEO, Malwarebytes in a release. “Companies of all types and sizes can fall victim at any time. Instances of ransomware infection are growing rapidly, and the first step in fighting a disease is protection.
“At Malwarebytes, we are doing everything we can to help companies like CSLFR and the other Fortune 500 companies in NASCAR to protect and defend themselves from cyber criminals who want to take their incredibly valuable data hostage.”
While debuting this weekend as an associate partner with driver Michael McDowell for Sunday’s Toyota / Save Mart 350 at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, Malwarebytes will hold the primary role for the July 16 New Hampshire 301 race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
