So did the Russian hackers get the ransom?

[mobeau69]

Talking heads don’t even have an opinion!

Colonial: Pay ‘em.

[Effete Snob]

1. One would imagine...

That there is deep redundancy in their systems and what they can replace when they need to.

It is a piece of infrastructure that blows up every now and then.

Like it did in 2016:

https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/01/news/colonial-pipeline-explosion-gasoline-price-spike/index.html



A fatal explosion along a crucial gasoline pipeline Monday could cause widespread gasoline shortages in the Southeast United States and result in higher prices up and down the East Coast.

[mobeau69]

3. What do you mean, "can replace when they need to."?

[Effete Snob]

10. .

https://medium.com/must-know-computer-science/system-design-redundancy-and-replication-e9946aa335ba

The pipeline moves 100 million gallons of product per day.

The net value of the computer systems in question is... what would you guess?

If I have a $10M system, susceptible to failure, that is responsible for moving, say, $200M of product a day, then I have another one sitting around in case I need to rip out the wires and pay insane money to do it quickly.

[LonePirate]

2. The ransom was not paid. It was the company's billing system that was compromised, not the pipeline.

The company could not maintain its books regarding what was sold through the pipeline so they had to shut it down. The computer system controlling the pipeline was never hacked or ransomed.

[dweller]

5. but it blowed up real good, right ?

there’s the pic of the boom


✌🏻

[Effete Snob]

6. In 2016, it had a major explosion

And was offline longer than this.

You see this link:

https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/01/news/colonial-pipeline-explosion-gasoline-price-spike/index.html

You see "2016" in the link?

Are you suggesting that was a fake news story?

[mobeau69]

7. Not at all. nt

[Midnight Writer]

4. It would be a damn shame if some rogue American hackers tapped into some Russian oligarchs' accounts

Freeze their assets until they pay a ransom.

I believe Russia has some very profitable pipelines, for starters.

[mobeau69]

9. There it is. Cyber War

[soothsayer]

8. Nope, they thwarted it!

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2742123

[mobeau69]

11. Old news. In a deal like this things change fat. It

doesn’t matter what they said anytime before a deal was reached?

[Quemado]

12. Per CNN, no

https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/us-gas-demand-05-12-21/h_988c88c3dab0db753421c7f1a0a59516

Hackers demanded nearly $5 million from Colonial Pipeline

From CNN's Geneva Sands and Josh Campbell
Ransomware hackers demanded nearly $5 million from Colonial Pipeline, according to two sources familiar with the incident.

As CNN reported earlier today, at this point the company has not paid the ransom.

[PortTack]

13. Pipeline expected to open again Friday..as in this Friday

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

14. Colonial Pipeline paid hackers nearly $5 million in ransom, sources say

Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction.

The company paid the hefty ransom in untraceable cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator to get gasoline and jet fuel flowing again to major cities along the East Coast, those people said. A third person familiar with the situation said U.S. government officials are aware that Colonial made the payment.

Once they received the payment, the hackers provided the operator with a decrypting tool to restore its disabled computer network. The tool was so slow that the company continued using its own backups to help restore the system, one of the people familiar with the company’s efforts said.

A representative from Colonial declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for the National Security Council.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colonial-pipeline-paid-hackers-nearly-dollar5-million-in-ransom-sources-say/ar-BB1gHobz?li=BBnb7Kz

If they did regular backups and had good anti-malware software they would have had to.

My computer was infected with ransomware 6 years ago. They wanted $1000 in bitcoin to decrypt.

I downloaded and ran Spy Hunter. I'm sure there are several other programs out there that will work.

It took me a couple of days to clear the infection then I restored my data from backup.