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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

#61

Post by ComodoHacker »

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…

That was until 15-20 years ago.

*nix OSes may have been as far superior to Windows as you can imagine, but the development ecosystem certainly wasn't. There were Delphi, VB and other RAD tools for Windows, with tons of GUI and general purpose libraries and toolkits. Bun on *nix you basically had just GCC and vim/emacs. There were no GitHub, no npm, no AWS, nothing. If you'd compare TCO of an enterprise app plus necessary infrastructure, the Windows-flavored one would come a clear winner. Even mixed environments were too much of a hassle, due to poor interoperability.

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

#62

Post by aurizon »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #8
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…

> 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? This is exactly what we expect them to do in a crisis situation. This is also how Hollywood portrays ethical behavior. The store owner in Jericho (2006 TV series) is the first to come to mind, but there should be plenty of other examples. And good deeds come back to us.

That sort of thinking brought down the USSR, nothing was paid for and the commie elite sold shit for US $ and wasted it. In time this system would have no oil as well as no $$ and all the pipes would be trashed...

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

#63

Post by ForHackernews »

Hamuko wrote: post #60
austincheney wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do that anyways here even without ransomware attacks. There were all kinds of articles about it on the front page of HN.

When?

Texas recently shut down their power grid when it got cold out because it was cheaper than weatherproofing or suffering the regulations to interconnect with other neighbouring states.

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

#64

Post by cowsandmilk »

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…

Frankly, you seem to lack knowledge here. Your example of a grocery store is B2C with no knowledge of the customers. The pipeline is B2B with legal contracts in place and use invoices.

You can order dozens of types of oil through the pipeline. With travel distances of thousands of miles, many destinations, and the need for product segregation, the pipeline knows where all the oil is going.

If they couldn’t track segregation and destinations in the pipeline, that is a good reason to shut down. If they were just going to be delayed in sending out invoices or had to input some items into the system manually after recovery, they most definitely should not have shut down.

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

#65

Post by dwighttk »

girvo wrote: post #40
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

An invoice would say “you owe $x for y gallons of gas” not “hey pay us some money for that gas you got”

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

#66

Post by bkor »

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 the goodness of the typical person?

This is about business to business, not business to consumer. I suggest to talk to a financial/accounting person in a big company. Often enough there are mistakes in payments that are only noticed by the other business. This despite all the various layers that should've prevented the entire problem.

I don't mean small mistakes either, I mean where someone wanted to enter something like 1234.56 (two decimals), but it ended up as 1234560.00. Basically a mixup between the decimal and thousand separator; such mistakes happen way more often than you'd think. I've heard various stories of a vendor notifying the company that they've been overpaid, e.g. the 1000 times what it should've been, but also various other kinds of mistakes.

Some companies have been working together for various decades. Employees might've switched between the companies, people know each other. It really isn't uncommon to have quite a bit of trust between companies. Obviously, this does depend on the country. In some parts of the world there's more trust than other parts.

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

#67

Post by Hamuko »

ForHackernews wrote: post #63
Hamuko wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When?

Texas recently shut down their power grid when it got cold out because it was cheaper than weatherproofing or suffering the regulations to interconnect with other neighbouring states.

That's not in any way similar. The Colonial Pipeline was not shut down because they ran out of petroleum to distribute.

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

#68

Post by bkor »

dwighttk wrote: post #65
girvo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

An invoice would say “you owe $x for y gallons of gas” not “hey pay us some money for that gas you got”

True, but still: a lot of (big) businesses are still quite unhappy if they didn't pay what they should've paid. It also creates an uncertainty for them, there's often various years where the money can be requested back. Plus as far as I know, if you notice an error there's various financial rules you need to follow. You cannot just treat it as "cost saved". As a result, it is way easier to notify the other party and get a mistake fixed.

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

#69

Post by thenoblesunfish »

austincheney wrote: post #48
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…

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.

There are some restrictions on when the utilities can shut off your power, water, electricity, etc. Whether gasoline should be regulated like a utility is an interesting question. Given how dependent on cars most Americans are, seems like a reasonable conversation to have.

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

#70

Post by whoopdedo »

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 was in a fast-food restaurant when their credit card processor went down. They continued to take orders and if the customer didn't have cash the food was free. The cost of poor service and losing repeat customers was greater than the reduction in profit.

Now, this was a semi-independent franchise owned by a local family. Across the street, the chain big-box store had the same thing happen and they put a sign on the door saying "cash only".

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