Houston Rockets Investigating Cyber Attack 'From a Relatively New Ransomware Group'

The Houston Rockets and FBI are investigating a cyber attack against the NBA franchise's networks. 

Per Kartikay Mehrotra of Bloomberg on Thursday, the Rockets confirmed an "attempted intrusion" from a "relatively new ransomware group that claims to have stolen internal business data."

Rockets spokesperson Tracey Hughes said in a statement to Mehrotra the attempted attack did not impact the organization's operations. 

"It appears that the unknown actors attempted to install ransomware on certain internal systems at the Rockets," Hughes said. "However, our internal security tools prevented ransomware from being installed except for a few systems that have not impacted our operations."

According to Mehrotra, hacking group Babuk claimed to have stolen 500 gigabytes of Rockets data that includes contracts and non-disclosure agreements and is "threatening to publish it if the team declines to pay."

The group gained prominence earlier this year for a digital extortion attack on outsoucring company Serco.