Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 524 posts

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#491

Post by whimsicalism »

kjrose wrote: post #201

The fact this was paid off, and paid off so rapidly means that targeting major infrastructure for massive payoffs is going to become more and more prominent. The next time though, it'll be $50M. I work with people in the oil fields and I know the numbers they are playing with and the fact that a single well being down can easily be $100,000 lost per hour. So obviously they want these systems back up fast. $5M for shu…

I think you're entirely wrong. I doubt the hackers realized quite what they had hacked, and by the time they did realize, they were probably shaking in their boots.

My guess is they lowballed - $5m is considerably less than other payments I have seen them take before for a much bigger catch.

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#492

Post by whimsicalism »

prepend wrote: post #487
ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work for your personal system, but in the corporate environment, what's to keep someone with legitimate system access from emptying the wallets periodically and blaming an advanced persistent threat? It would be better to do the same system with standard bank transactions, and just provide a promise to not prosecute people who make contact after pwning your company.

Since the wallets are canaries the rooted hosts will have to be rebuilt. Also make the dollar amounts relatively low so an insider is unlikely to risk their position. $1000 is a lot to someone who doesn’t care but is foolish for someone who passed a security check to get access.

I think you substantially underestimate how much these ransomware companies make once they've gained access.

If they've gained access, they'll just do their normal thing and then right as s they're doing it empty out the wallets. $1000 is not going to deter them from a multi million payday

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#493

Post by whimsicalism »

capableweb wrote: post #37
aazaa wrote: post #31

> 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. I thought the protocol for these attacks was to send the decryption keys, not provide a "decrypting tool." If some kind of softwa…

Probably a reporter/reporting issue. No company that just have been hacked would run a binary received from the hackers in order to restore the systems, they cannot be that stupid. But then again, they did pay the ransom and also seemingly can't restore their systems from backups, so who knows how stupid they really are? More charitable reading is that the encryption key was sent over, and they started restoring with…

Pretty hilarious to see all these comments from people who have no idea what they are talking about.

Thinking $5m is a "high" ransom, thinking that there is no way they would send a decryption binary rather than a key.

Why don't you just actually research how these schemes function before commenting? The team that did this has a pretty consistent MO and five million was a massive discount.

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#494

Post by freshair »

FDSGSG wrote: post #321
freshair wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the mugger isn't bluffing, then he'll get your money one way or the other. This makes it different from paying ransoms. Furthermore, a corporation's bottom line is not truly comparable to a human life. However it is my understanding that paying ransoms to save human lives is technically illegal to. If paying a ransom to save your family member's life is illegal, then corporations paying ransoms to protect their fi…

>However it is my understanding that paying ransoms to save human lives is technically illegal to You are wrong.

I did some more research and it seems I am substantially correct; paying a ransom to a terrorist organization is illegal.

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#495

Post by fsckboy »

jackson1442 wrote: post #392
QuarterReptile wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what's way more effective at stopping gas hoarding so it's available for someone who really wants/needs it? Doubling the price per gallon. Anti-price gouging laws caused the shortage, just like with toilet paper and PPE last year.

A price increase that effectively stops people from hoarding gas would be equally as effective at stopping people who need gas from affording it.

> A price increase that effectively stops people from hoarding gas would be equally as effective at stopping people who need gas from affording it.

no, your statement is false.

Hoarding cheap gas results in zero gas at the pump, and that is MORE effective at stopping people who need it than high prices do.

That's right, market pricing solves allocation problems that your misguided approach creates.

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#496

Post by fsckboy »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #480
QuarterReptile wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Addressing legitimate problems of hardship can be dealt with from the other end, by channeling resources to those people. In the mean time, higher prices mean that supply isn't interrupted, and for the vast majority of people that means that you don't fill up your car and your wife's car and your lawnmower and a 55gal drum, because it's not worth it. You just skip a few trips and let your gas tank get below half a ta…

The people who would be hurt by such an increase, absent already-in-place assistance, constitute the vast majority of people. And, unfortunately, nobody is helped by "can be dealt with" -- the policies to prevent their pain, and to prevent disadvantaged folks from being disproportionately impacted by such an increase, need to be in place before the increase. The reason, which is likely apparent to both of us and ever…

> The people who would be hurt by such an increase, absent already-in-place assistance, constitute the vast majority of people.

and so you suggest hurting the vast majority of people even more?

That's right, your suggested approach of keeping artificially-low-prices-that-allow-hoarding leads to zero gas at the pumps, and zero gas at the pumps hurts the vast majority of people very directly and very effectively.

Allowing prices to float higher in a shortage solves the allocation problem for scarce resources by ensuring that people think twice about how they use it, while keeping it available. Ignoring that the resource is scarce not only doesn't solve anything, it makes the problem worse.

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#497

Post by fsckboy »

devwastaken wrote: post #453
QuarterReptile wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what's way more effective at stopping gas hoarding so it's available for someone who really wants/needs it? Doubling the price per gallon. Anti-price gouging laws caused the shortage, just like with toilet paper and PPE last year.

Price of gold and silver is at its peak and people are buying it more than ever convinced it will somehow become extinct. The people who have money to hoard gas are also the people who have the money to hoard gas at double the price. These are not individuals with any knowledge of economics - theyre not doing it for trade, they're doing it out of belief.

> Price of gold and silver is at its peak and people are buying it more than ever

no, you've got it exactly backward. People buying it more than ever is driving the price up, and the feedback of higher prices is actually slowing down their purchasing not only by changing their minds, but also because their purchasing budget is spread more thinly.

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#498

Post by unclebucknasty »

rswail wrote: post #472
unclebucknasty wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These ransoms are net good...There are a lot of infrastructure teams taking security more seriously. Nonsense. This is not an academic exercise. Our country is being attacked by "nation states" (do more research) and we need to respond accordingly, treating it as the national security threat it is and making the perpetrators pay a heavy price. If they'd bombed our critical infrastructure, no one would be sitting ar…

> Wake up. We're at war. With whom? And given that nation states have engaged in this sort of thing for years, and that the US/5-eyes/etc also engage in these activities, do you really want to turn a cyber/cold-war into a hot one? The solution is defense-in-depth, with liability on the providers of software, which will require them to insure, which will raise prices, which will force them to address security as COGS…

Russia. That's not exactly a secret.

I didn't say we needed to turn it hot. Where did you read that? But, I do believe this idea that we "shouldn't escalate" emboldens the aggressors.

There is no defense-only solution. Your profile says you work in IT, so you know that.

Why are you against punishing/deterring the aggressors?

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#499

Post by mathattack »

kjrose wrote: post #201

The fact this was paid off, and paid off so rapidly means that targeting major infrastructure for massive payoffs is going to become more and more prominent. The next time though, it'll be $50M. I work with people in the oil fields and I know the numbers they are playing with and the fact that a single well being down can easily be $100,000 lost per hour. So obviously they want these systems back up fast. $5M for shu…

It certainly will fund them to go stronger in the future. (And now invents bad behavior even more) The challenge is this isn’t this Colonial’s problem. It’s the next one.

At some point it will wake up the authorities to go after them more seriously too.

Re: Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom

#500

Post by brobdingnagians »

Scoundreller wrote: post #489
brobdingnagians wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to wait and see if future results justify current actions, when the action is preparation for some future event. It is only in hindsight that we can truly point out if someone's risk/reward calculation for the future was flawed. I'm not buying gold, but the odd thing is that Russian and Chinese central banks are. I would assume those people know a thing or two about economics. I'm curious to see what the futu…

Why would Russia and China central banks buy gold? They’re already the #3 and #1 producing countries world-wide.

Because their central banks are concerned about stability of international currencies [1]. A central bank is in a good position to use gold, whereas most individuals aren't.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-russian-and-chinese-ce...

Post reply on HN