Link: https://www.governing.com/security/colonial-pipeline-hack-reveals-americas-vulnerabilities
Excerpt:
If you want to get Americans’ attention, hit their ability to drive. Panic buying and gas lines were quickly seen in the Southeast. Midweek, 71 percent of the gas stations in car-burdened Charlotte, North Carolina, were dry.
Ransomware takes control of a company’s or organization’s software or data until the owners make a payment. Even paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee the owners will get control again.
Initial reports said Colonial refused to pay ransom. But Colonial handed over nearly $5 million to the hackers. Bloomberg reports that the payment was in difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency. In exchange, Colonial received a decrypting tool to help restore its disabled network.
DarkSide, believed to be based in Eastern Europe, released a statement saying, “We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics … Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society.”
But no one is safe from cybercrime, whether the attacker is a shadowy group or tied to a nation-state, whether they want money or data or to paralyze infrastructure. Whether the victim is an individual who opened an email containing malware or a leading technology company.
Author(s): Jon Talton, The Seattle Times
Publication Date: 14 May 2021
Publication Site: Governing