Unless operations are restored Tuesday at the US’s main pipeline, it is not the only one in the world to do so. But it’s not the first time That a gang of Russian cybercriminals attacked Friday with a ransomware attack, the unrest will begin to accumulate quickly, first hitting in Atlanta and Tennessee, then in snowball in New York State, according to a prediction of the worst-case scenario that oil market analyst Gaurav Sharma shared with the BBC.
In other words, the consequences of the attack on Colonial Pipeline, which manages America’s largest pipeline network, can become ugly very quickly. guilty of the attack on what one official described as nothing less than the “jugular” of the US pipeline system. “Nice stay” This is the largest and most successful attack on energy infrastructure we know in the United States,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, a power researcher at Politico AND instead of well-equipped hackers running with the imprimatur and a geographic region (such as China or Iran), experts point to a team called DarkSide, described as a relatively new but experienced organization of Russian hackers who have a quasi-professional operation and exploited in the piracy scene.
Just over a week ago, the last time we saw Russian hackers are brazen in their target attacks in the United States, such as the one that opposes Washington, D. D. Metropolitan Police Department, which was attacked via a ransomware organization that called himself Babuk. Unless the police paid, the hackers threatened to publish sensitive data stolen from the department’s computer network.
The attack on the colonial pipeline, of course, is exponentially worse, on the one hand, its network carries 45% of the fuel that is fed across the east coast of the United States, important amenities such as Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which until this year classified as the busiest airport in the world, gets fuel from Colonial Pipeline, as well as military bases located in the pipeline footprint.
– Jason Bordoff (@JasonBordoff) May 8, 2021
Other key information about Colonial Pipeline and this security incident:
President Biden declared a state of emergency Sunday after the ransomware incident, in which hackers stole nearly 100 GB of knowledge from the pipe operator’s network before blocking the formula and payment not easy.
On Sunday, Colonial Pipeline issued one that read, in part: “While our main lines (lines 1, 2, 3, and 4) remain offline, some smaller-looking lines between terminals and delivery issues are already operational. re-establishing the service on other fronts and we will only put our full formula back online when we feel it is safe to do so, and in full compliance with the approval of all federal regulations. »
Cybersecurity reporter Kim Zetter published a Substack newsletter, Zero Day, which further analyzed the incident in a new edition over the weekend. Among the highlights that caught my eye in his report, a source working for “a giant intermediate oil company that supplies fuel to the Colonial pipeline” told him that his own company had to struggle to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, with the fuel they are in tanks that will have to be delivered to Colonial. “We want to locate a refinery garage (and we may run out (the garage) if it takes too long,” the fountain told Zetter. “Then refineries (will have to) reduce. The challenge is getting worse. “
And even though Colonial stated that only his corporate computer network had become inflamed with the Russian gang ransomware, and that Colonial had closed its operational network as a precaution, the anonymous source mentioned above also told Zero Day that he suspected, but that he did not. Of course, what Colonial wants to restart the pipe may be blocked in the ransomware attack. It is assumed that this is Colonial’s visitor billing system.
We have already noticed this movie with NotPetya and other PC attacks. If you can’t qualify or who your consumers are, you may not yet have a selection to close https://t. co/NkTJ5ttDwS
– Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) May 10, 2021
Andy is a Memphis journalist who also collaborates with media outlets such as Fast Company and The Guardian. When he does not write about technology, he is discovered relying protectively on his nascent vinyl collection, as well as curing his whoviaism and feeding on a variety of themes. TV screens you probably don’t like.