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The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

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Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#31

Post by josefx »

MattGaiser wrote: post #18
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe you have to think about the total economic impact for the article and frustration to make more sense. Fuel is a very fundamental part of our economy and almost always goes toward producing much more value than the value of the fuel itself. Add to that, shortages can and do contribute to irreversible losses like loss of life. If every gas distributor shut down because ransomware hit them all, you could c…

> It's not too far fetched either to hope that their customers would be willing to self-report. Sure you might get some people who'd take advantage of the situation Would you bet millions of dollars on the goodness of the typical person?

Would you bet millions of dollars on payment system with zero redundancy? Also with that kind of money involved I wouldn't be surprised if you could could get a court case running and force them to report how much they took.

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#32

Post by cube00 »

darkwater wrote: post #10

How come that billing is basically ALWAYS the typical system that - no matter what - runs on Windows? SMEs software, big enterprise software and everything in between, you can have 99% of your core systems running on whatever operating system you want, or several of them, but the billing/payroll/accounting system will ALWAYS be Windows. Even if SAP has Linux/Unix versions.

Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C++ had quite the market hold when a lot of this was built in the 90s

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#33

Post by helsinkiandrew »

colechristensen wrote: post #4

The author of this article comes off as really very clueless. Yes, in fact, if a store's computers go down they don't just let customers walk out the door with products and hope they get paid eventually? As far as I understand colonial is basically a big gas station connected with a series of tubes. Look ma, the gas pump still works but it doesn't keep track of how much we pumped or charge us any more! Of course they…

The difference is that the Colonial Pipeline is seen as an important part of the US Critical National Infrastucture - without oil large parts of the economy and security system breakdown, people can die. It's protected by Homeland Security and the FBI too a much greater extent than your average store.

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#34

Post by bilekas »

darkwater wrote: post #10

How come that billing is basically ALWAYS the typical system that - no matter what - runs on Windows? SMEs software, big enterprise software and everything in between, you can have 99% of your core systems running on whatever operating system you want, or several of them, but the billing/payroll/accounting system will ALWAYS be Windows. Even if SAP has Linux/Unix versions.

If you're going to have a billing system that you need to rely on for the functioning of your business. You're going to want to have ongoing support for that system, this is why so many enterprise options are Windows based. Especcially in earlier years, and financial suites, once implemented, are very rarely ever changed. If its still bringing in money, the higher-ups dont care.

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#35

Post by eps »

throwaway378037 wrote: post #13
eps wrote: post #5

Can we get the title fixed please? Even if it's misspelled at the source. ..., shut down ...

Both are valid, it’s journalistic headline abbreviation. It can be read as: > [the] shutdown [was] to make sure Or with your correction it would be read as: > [it was] shut down to make sure So it’s not incorrect in the source article, it is just using the noun shutdown , rather than the verb to shut down .

You are being way too generous. Your first expansion is a very big stretch.

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#36

Post by neltnerb »

alibarber wrote: post #30
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how credit card processing operated worldwide for many decades. That's also how hawala works. And Wikipedia, if you want a non-monetary example. They are all literally trusting in the goodness of the typical person. And then doing some careful analysis and planning. And fraud detection for the rare misdeeds.

But a credit card still keeps track of how much you spend - it doesn't rely on you honestly reporting how much you spent over the month...

Oh, I think they are talking about the earlier period where you just did a carbon copy of the card, got it signed, and if the card was a fake there was certainly no way to tell at the time. It would be the equivalent of a bad check, talking the days before swipe machines.

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#37

Post by mike_d »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #33
colechristensen wrote: post #4

The author of this article comes off as really very clueless. Yes, in fact, if a store's computers go down they don't just let customers walk out the door with products and hope they get paid eventually? As far as I understand colonial is basically a big gas station connected with a series of tubes. Look ma, the gas pump still works but it doesn't keep track of how much we pumped or charge us any more! Of course they…

The difference is that the Colonial Pipeline is seen as an important part of the US Critical National Infrastucture - without oil large parts of the economy and security system breakdown, people can die. It's protected by Homeland Security and the FBI too a much greater extent than your average store.

Ok, so the government steps in and says the pipeline operates without a billing system... now what?

Pipes are useless without something to flow through them, and no oil producer is going to fill the pipe without a system to get paid.

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#38

Post by Stranger43 »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #23
darkwater wrote: post #10

How come that billing is basically ALWAYS the typical system that - no matter what - runs on Windows? SMEs software, big enterprise software and everything in between, you can have 99% of your core systems running on whatever operating system you want, or several of them, but the billing/payroll/accounting system will ALWAYS be Windows. Even if SAP has Linux/Unix versions.

I bet their billing system is custom and was developed in times when Windows was a better choice. And nobody was able (or even tried) to justify a switch since then.

At what point in history was that?

Unix(tm) and mainframes predate windows server by a far margin and was never seen as inferior to windows by the wider sysadmin community, there might have been a time when windows server had merit as the discount solutions for people who could not afford highly available Unix boxen, but it was never seen as superior or particularly well suited for critical infrastructure.

I think that's kind of whats in play here, few finance systems were designed as critical as well finance was that department that generated a few reports that nobody really read and rarely interacted with the core productive business to the point where flaws/bugs in finance systems could have an real impact until very recently so what you have is a bunch of aging discount/non-critical system that have been promoted to critical infrastructure nearly by accident.

The same goes for the desktop support infrastructure build around AD and SMB file shares, where systems that used to be auxiliary nice to have for clerical workers ended up as critical for the actual productive divisions without ever receiving any real hardening.

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#39

Post by manicdee »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #20
romwell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes, in fact, if a store's computers go down they don't just let customers walk out the door with products and hope they get paid eventually? They better do that if they get the permission from the gov't to operate the only grocery store in the area, and people weren't able to get food otherwise.

Okay, so establish some sort of "crisis service fund" that pays out when payment processing breaks through no fault of your own. This is something the state can do at any time. Honestly, allowing a monopoly without planning something like this just seems careless. Providing service without hope of ever being paid is stupid. The market is pretty good at selecting against stupidity.

There are ways of collecting payments that don’t involve contactless card terminals.

Re: The Colonial Pipeline Was Fine, Shutdown to Make Sure Its Owner Would Get Paid

#40

Post by girvo »

MattGaiser wrote: post #18
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe you have to think about the total economic impact for the article and frustration to make more sense. Fuel is a very fundamental part of our economy and almost always goes toward producing much more value than the value of the fuel itself. Add to that, shortages can and do contribute to irreversible losses like loss of life. If every gas distributor shut down because ransomware hit them all, you could c…

> It's not too far fetched either to hope that their customers would be willing to self-report. Sure you might get some people who'd take advantage of the situation Would you bet millions of dollars on the goodness of the typical person?

I mean that’s how lots of business works? Is that not the whole basis of invoicing? I must be misunderstanding
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