Colonial Pipeline paid nearly $5 million in ransom

So Biden didn't get involved in the Colonial pipeline ransomware attack and left them to fend for themselves.
They ended up paying the ransom of $5 million opening the door wide open for more of this kind of attack.
Who will be next?

www.marketwatch.com...
Colonial Pipeline paid Eastern European hackers nearly $5 million in an untraceable cryptocurrency last week in response to a ransomware attack, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the transaction. A Colonial spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

a reply to: CharlesT

I'm sure they learned their lesson and won't exploit anymore critical infrastructure companies in the future.

Not a good precedent to set, us relying on technology is going to be our undoing..paying ransoms is never a good thing.

Great, now we can look forward to more ransomware attacks against our infrastructure and critical businesses. That's why you don't pay ransom - as soon as you do, everyone else wants their chance at becoming instantly rich. An oil shortage was bad enough, but what happens when there's no electricity?

I'm going to buy a Tesla Model S now... Been waiting for something the push me to pull that trigger. It seems used ones are now like 50k.

originally posted by: trollz
Great, now we can look forward to more ransomware attacks against our infrastructure and critical businesses. That's why you don't pay ransom - as soon as you do, everyone else wants their chance at becoming instantly rich. An oil shortage was bad enough, but what happens when there's no electricity?

Make ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure terrorism and a capital offence, but there is a good chance the culprits are overseas. I guess follow the money unless it is bitcoins.

$5 million heh? now take out ALL the electronic interfaces and put humans back in charge and the 5 mil. can pay their wages for the next few years. Problem solved.

a reply to: CharlesT

This isn't the first time a ransom has been paid.

Local governments have been ransomwared and found paying is cheaper than a cleanse.

What do we expect the federal government to do in these circumstances?

Subsidize cost? Regulate? Provide IT infrastructure?

Does them not intervening mean no FBI and interpol investigation? I doubt it.

To be clear, Biden is a sh** placeholder, but I am genuinely curious on what we expect a president to do in this situation.

It may have been cheaper to hire an engineer to disable the electronic controls and just turn on the valve manually. Unless it was all set up to rise the cost and never let it go back down...

originally posted by: crayzeed
$5 million heh? now take out ALL the electronic interfaces and put humans back in charge and the 5 mil. can pay their wages for the next few years. Problem solved.

Yeah, Right.

I've worked with companies who get hacked like this.

Step one, get back up and running quickly. If your backups are hosed, pay the ransom.
Step two, hire some low wage people to make a 'good faith' effort it wont happen again (I saw their job listing a few days ago)
Step three, get reimbursement from insurance and/or the government for the cost of ransom AND the lost revenue
Step four, give half the reimbursement to upper management as a bonus, invest the rest into more automation to reduce cost of employees

Step five... more profit.

We know who did this. Why are these people not in jail by now? Not only did they admit it they actually apologized. That 5 mill should have been used to track these idiots down.

a reply to: CharlesT

What is the US policy of paying ransoms to terrorists?

What do you want to bet that the biden administration demanded this private company to pay up and open the pipeline? I'd bet both my nuts on it.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

It was an act of war. Special ops know how to handle these situations.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

What do we expect the feds to do ? How about their jobs... Protect the country .

FBI has resources for "wHiTe SuPrEMAcIsTs"
FBI has resources for Fake hate crimes
FBI has resources to chase woman in Alaska for laptops
FBI has resources to find trump supporters


But completely clueless to foreign threats ? How about we start with the incompetence first. How about we fix our weaponized FBI , CIA , and now military ... TO focus on ACTUAL THREATS to NATIONAL Security Instead of telling how they are gender neutral and glad they have another trans employee

I expect the president to Start firing people in TOP positions . That's what i expect. If trump was in power i would expect the same..

No more bs

originally posted by: XL5
It may have been cheaper to hire an engineer to disable the electronic controls and just turn on the valve manually. Unless it was all set up to rise the cost and never let it go back down...

I think it's probably a lot more complicated than that.

a reply to: seedofchucky

What exactly are the FBI, the CIA, or thr military going to do? Do you want us to start launching attacks on citizens of foreign countries because they may hack a private corporation?

a reply to: seedofchucky

FBI has resources for "wHiTe SuPrEMAcIsTs"
FBI has resources for Fake hate crimes
FBI has resources to chase woman in Alaska for laptops
FBI has resources to find trump supporters

FBI is domestic.

That's why I brought up interpol as well, and we can add the CIA if we're being honest.

originally posted by: panoz77
a reply to: CriticalStinker

It was an act of war. Special ops know how to handle these situations.

I know for a fact we have special ops who are armed with computers instead of guns doing similar things.

Do we know if dark side is state sponsored or a rogue actor? If it's a rogue actor, conventional warfare isn't an (wise) option.

There's a lot of unknowns with this.

But if I had to speculate, hitting them at their own game, cyber warfare, is likely the measured response needed. Hack the group, pillage and dox.

originally posted by: Xcalibur254

What exactly are the FBI, the CIA, or thr military going to do? Do you want us to start launching attacks on citizens of foreign countries because they may hack a private corporation?

So like Obama era?

a reply to: Xcalibur254

They don't need to attack any citizens of foreign countries.. Why do you go straight to a knee jerk reaction ? You must be a democrat.

They need to figure out HOW it happened. What HOLES are in the system and FIX IT ASAP . They need BACK UP of BACK UP systems READDY TO GO . Incase of NEW Attacks...

They should have been ready and prepared with OFFLINE systems that will TAKE OVER Operations ASAP .
They havn't done that. They still let these things happen over and over again ..

This is happened multiple times before and still happening. There is zero excuse for this to be happening . You don't need systems connnected '



These are things to START. After you take care of these and you actually have evidence of who CARRIED OUT THE ATTACKS ... Not LIES like they did with the democrat DNC HACK ..

Then you can approach foriegn leaders with REAL EVIDENCE .. Not Weapons of Mass destruction guesses...


This is the problem with the government . They all have mentality like yours... No gray zone. Just black and white....