Posted on 05/13/2021 7:59:37 AM PDT by C210N
That money should have been spent on a backup system!
Geez... I have a backup and protection against virus, spyware and ransomware on my pc.
You don’t kiss and tell and you don’t pay a ransom and tell... for the same reason... You become an easy mark. Just shut up.
Well now we see how the company was able to get the pipeline going again in a matter of days.
$5 million is, pardon the pun, a drop in the bucket compared to the economical impact. I don’t have an issue with them paying the ransom. Their lackluster security caught up with them. I just hope that they, and others, learn from this and start beefing up their security.
If you develop a habit of taking shortcuts down dark alleys at night to save time, and you get held up - hand over your wallet and stop walking down dark alleys at night.
Don’t expect the police to make dark alleys safe. Likewise, don’t expect the government to make you safe from cyber criminals.
Not to worry....Biden signed an EO on cybersecurity. We’re all good now....yeh...right.
Well, luckily that won’t function as an incentive for other criminals... /s
The teen next door told me that about your PC when he hacked it.
Just kidding.
PP money. And a mere $5 million? The family of drug addicts can get more than that. One word. PCMatic! Just sayin’................ :-}
Pay the $5M. Then track the crooks down and kill them quietly. Unofficial. Below the radar. They just disappear and are never found.
Well, luckily ‘giving the bully your lunch money’ won’t function as an incentive for other criminals... /s
(In a war situation - or an attack by a revenge culture like Iran - there wouldn’t be anyone to pay... pipelines would be down - and stay down. That would be worse.
It’s why infrastructure spending can’t be spent on 4 year olds getting free daycare...)
Only in the very short term. Colonial Pipeline just put a huge target on themselves for other hacking groups and for other big American infrastructure (and other) companies as well.
Secondarily, by paying the "ransom" Colonial Pipeline admitted they knew they couldn't recover their systems and that their DR/BR plans either didn't exist or were so fatally flawed they were dead in the water without paying the ransom extortion.
None of this is a good look for Colonial Pipeline. If they're smart (and I'm not saying they are ...) they'd hire a crack Network Security & Infrastructure consulting firm to go in and straighten their crap out so this doesn't happen again.
So the line is running again ... until the hackers attack again
... now knowing that the company will pay!!
(some idiots need to be fired)
Plus when the DC cops were given the threat and they offered "$100,000" to keep their secrets quiet. I think then the bad guys said "Including the Christmas party pictures and the secrets about the love lives of the DC Chief and other officers" they said "Okay, $5 million."
While “hackers” get all the headlines, remember that the easiest and most effective way to break into a system is on location.
This could be employees or it could be thumb drives placed in the parking lot and put in the computer by curious employees.
Other alternatives could be visitors to the site (computer repair-folks would have an easy time of it).
Next it’s going to be the electrical grid.
Trump ordered that no Chinese software or hardware be in the grid. One of the first things Biden did was to rescind that order.
Wait till the electricity goes out and you’ll see all those abandoned Teslas on the side of the road. The woke will get whacked!
“Why aren’t we bombing the hell out of these people?”
While I agree their management is pathetic, I’d prefer to see trials, maybe even criminal trials.
We like to call it a free no interest forgivable loan from taxpayers - the GOP needs to find out who paid.
Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the company paid in untraceable cryptocurrency within hours after the attack. After the hackers received the payment, they provided the operator with a decrypting tool to restore its computer network.
1. If this happened "within hours" then this shutdown wasn't not necessary...UNLESS Colonial feared there was potentially more cyber damage and took the whole thing offline to do a bare-metal restore.
2. Bloomberg would NEVER lie. /s
3. About $5MM is plausible but sounds cheap.
4. The intent of this story if untrue is to gin-up demands to nationalize pipelines. Sure, Colonial may have misstepped, but do you REALLY want Leviathan, with staff holding g a DMV-like work ethic and skills below that of q-tip, running pipelines?
I'm calling BS.
They did. Mandiant. They're onsite.
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