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U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

washingtonpost.com

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Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#151

Post by walrus01 »

mimikatz wrote: post #146

We need to have military responses to these attacks. Ransomware is running rampant because they don't fear any punishment for attacks. If people attacked our hospitals and pipelines with explosives we wouldn't sit by and do nothing.

Precisely ascribing the origins of a malware attack, with 100% confidence, to one specific nation state is a very hard problem to solve. The time/effort that it would take for one nation to launch an attack on a 2nd party, seeming to come from a third-party, or one of their own adversaries, is not very great.

At least not with the 100% confidence that politicians would want before the US military starts dropping JDAMs on buildings.

I would give fairly even odds that something like this is the work of an organization nation state, and also even odds that it's the work of some underemployed teenagers in a basement.

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#152

Post by LeoPanthera »

Sherl wrote: post #133
nfoz wrote: post #119

I hope this ransomware called itself the Da Vinci virus? Because this sounds a whole lot like the plot of Hackers [1]. The greatest movie of all time, btw. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_(film)

More movie recommendations please

If you like Hackers, the obvious other two are Sneakers, which is good, and The Net, which is not.

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#153

Post by LeoPanthera »

nfoz wrote: post #119

I hope this ransomware called itself the Da Vinci virus? Because this sounds a whole lot like the plot of Hackers [1]. The greatest movie of all time, btw. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_(film)

Wellll sort of. The "Da Vinci" virus claimed it was going to capsize oil tankers in order to cause an ecological disaster. Not just shut down a pipeline.

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#154

Post by kevingadd »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #149
Griffinsauce wrote: post #145

It's hilarious to me that a country that invests so much in their military doesn't seem to invest in the security of their infrastructure at all. The entire war machine will grind to a halt without oil. It would be one of the first thing to attack.

lol war machine? what war machine? there's proxy wars and internal civil conflicts happening abroad, and definitely shady profiteering in some places, and definitely refugee crisis many of which are caused by climate change actually...but what war machine are you talking about? there's no real war out there. if there was, most of us wouldn't be here posting anymore. I hope to God there's never actual war out there.

You'll find that many of the ongoing/recent conflicts listed on these pages involve bombs/rockets/aircraft/tanks, not to mention soldiers on the ground and in some cases occupation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2020s_conflicts

Remember when Russia invaded and seized part of Ukraine a few years ago? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#155

Post by detaro »

mimikatz wrote: post #146

We need to have military responses to these attacks. Ransomware is running rampant because they don't fear any punishment for attacks. If people attacked our hospitals and pipelines with explosives we wouldn't sit by and do nothing.

To take the last high-profile ransomware gang stopped, if we ignore for a moment that the US didn't find them, you think sending US special forces into Ukraine to arrest or kill some unarmed dudes in a basement would have aided US interests more than just having local law enforcement arrest them? Does this policy of deploying troops expand to gangs in NATO member states and other close allies?

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#156

Post by Bukhmanizer »

crmd wrote: post #125
thisisnico wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT is typically grossly understaffed and underfunded in these businesses. At the site-level, you'll see some very out of date tech running critical systems. IT is a cost-center to be reduced as much as possible, oversight is non-existent.

You always know you’re dealing with one of these companies when IT reports up into the CFO.

I used to work at a scientific research institute where the entire IT department reported to a single researcher for no apparent reason.

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#157

Post by [deleted] »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #148
nimbius wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its difficult to chastise a country that misses the forest for the trees, when that country has spent sixty years formenting a culture of blind consumption and wilful ignorance of anything STEM. instead of a flourishing culture of hacking and computing, the united states through DMCA and law relegated the notion to comic books and hollywood fiction. most of the public war drumming for 'hacking' (if it could be said t…

What are you talking about? The country has spent so much time on STEM, that we have a trade labor shortage. Please.

[deleted]

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#158

Post by flakiness »

After reading "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends" [1], I feel the world working normally is rather a sheer luck. (Probably I'm very late to realize this, but anyway )

To me the only reasonable survival strategy is redundancy, but I have no idea how we can reach there.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/This-They-Tell-World-Ends/dp/16355760...

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#159

Post by wolverine876 »

dillondoyle wrote: post #91
wolverine876 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should the military be handling domestic cybersecurity? That seems especially perilous to civil liberties, something out of dystopian sci-fi. The military's role isn't to provide peace and justice for citizens, it's to kill people and destroy things. That's not an insult to the military, that's what soldiers will tell you; we need to be realistic about it. They should not be operating around civilians in peacetime (e…

Not securing cyber and our infrastructure will kill and destroy things. What would be an example of a civil liberty violated by for instance standing up a large Brigade or service of tech soldiers who secure, patch, work to shore up our critical infra and services? + a lot of funding; we already prop up the lockheads of the country. I agree that it seems our Gov. can't be trusted not to intrude into our communication…

I completely agree that the infrastructure needs to be secured, and that it requires a lot of funding. I'm saying the military is the wrong organization for domestic operations.

What happens when the military believes an attack is coming from a private citizen? Can they spy on or take action against that person? Can that alleged attacker's computer be seized? On what evidence? What if the military determines that effective security means surveilling a wide area before an attack, or collecting all citizen data to have a source to search for clues in case of an attack? What if they determine, which some already agree, that the best defense is a good offense?

I'm of a mind that the security should be a regulation, and the infrastructure operators have to meet it. The NIST can develop standards and techniques, but the safety of infrastructure is part of the cost of doing business. Your plant can't be a menace to the community due to risk of explosion, pollution, etc. - it seems no different. The operators have gotten away with buying cheap, crappy IT for years. It's time to invest seriously in rigorous, quality engineering.

Re: U.S.'s Biggest Gasoline Pipeline Halted After Cyberattack

#160

Post by trompetenaccoun »

rurban wrote: post #140
v8dev123 wrote: post #30

All these attacks usually caused by two things, office macros and mimikatz.

Easier: Microsoft Windows

The government needs to finally ban Windows. In addition to being insecure it's used by many criminals for their scams and blackmail operations.
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