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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

#41

Post by girvo »

qalmakka wrote: post #21

IMHO, the USA has made the mistake of privatizing too much of its crucial infrastructure, ignoring that certain things are inherently monopolistic in nature and do not benefit at all from being in private hands. Privatizing infrastructure is extremely positive if there's any chance for competition to arise - for instance, Italy has moved from a monopolistic state phone company to a well regulated and open free market…

Australia has followed America in making that mistake too, sadly. Other countries as well I assume. The politicians that push this, seem to make sure it’s their cronies that are the ones that get to make billions off said privatisation, too.

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

#42

Post by SyzygistSix »

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 think there's a way they could count the number of all the trucks without a computer.

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

#43

Post by helsinkiandrew »

mike_d wrote: post #37
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The story was that hackers had closed the pipeline (or the owners had closed it because its systems become compromised).

If the pipeline is seen as a piece of critical infrastructure [1] - where its closure can damage other parts of the US - then if Colonial didn't tell the FBI, CISA, the Department of Transport (or whoever is in charge of that part of infrastructure) that the reason they were closing it was because they couldn't bill their customers rather than it being a safety issue, I imagine they are in trouble.

They were lucky in that it was only down for a short period, perhaps its OK - if it had been down long enough so ambulances stopped running and food and goods weren't delivered - then I'm sure the government would have told them to restart the pipeline and billing would have been sorted out some other way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_infrastructure_protec...

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

#44

Post by cube00 »

Stranger43 wrote: post #38
ComodoHacker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Thick desktops were ruled by Windows so if you wanted a custom application it was Microsoft Visual Basic or Visual C++, Java as desktop apps didn't seem to catch on for the enterprise. Even if you tried to bring an application to the web back in the 90s you could still end up caught in the Microsoft ecosystem via ActiveX.

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

#45

Post by brobdingnagians »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #25
FeepingCreature wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I lived both in a high-trust society and in a low-trust society. That you seem to have experienced only low-trust society may impact you worldview, but take my word for it, things are different elsewhere ;-)

I really like this comment. It is an indictment of our society if we feel like we can't trust anyone around us. I have people around me with whom I'd trust my life; it is much better to surround ourselves with those people. And there are lots of examples of societies historically and now where things operated very largely on trust.

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

#46

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #25
FeepingCreature wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I lived both in a high-trust society and in a low-trust society. That you seem to have experienced only low-trust society may impact you worldview, but take my word for it, things are different elsewhere ;-)

Don't be too harsh. The experience of living in a high-trust society is becoming more and more rare for future generations, due to certain policy decisions. They will just assume things being broken is the natural order.

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

#48

Post by austincheney »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #9
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…

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…

If only the world economy ran on tears and sympathy instead of recorded transactions. I should pray that all my utility and food providers function without charging me money... until they go bankrupt and I am left with neither.

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

#49

Post by capableweb »

girvo wrote: post #41
qalmakka wrote: post #21

IMHO, the USA has made the mistake of privatizing too much of its crucial infrastructure, ignoring that certain things are inherently monopolistic in nature and do not benefit at all from being in private hands. Privatizing infrastructure is extremely positive if there's any chance for competition to arise - for instance, Italy has moved from a monopolistic state phone company to a well regulated and open free market…

Australia has followed America in making that mistake too, sadly. Other countries as well I assume. The politicians that push this, seem to make sure it’s their cronies that are the ones that get to make billions off said privatisation, too.

On the other hand you have countries like Norway, where parts of the profits earned from oil goes into the "Oil Fund" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...), currently the "world’s largest sovereign wealth fund". If Norway had failure like the US, they could easily offset the costs while making things still work as usual for a while, as they are thinking ahead.

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

#50

Post by thenoblesunfish »

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…

I think the point they’re really trying to make is that gas should be treated like a utility - you shouldn’t provide it solely based on profitability for a corporation. But you are right that the way things are now, it’s quite clear why they shut down, and that outrage at this particular company seems to really be outrage at the system which it operates in.
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