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

washingtonpost.com

161–170 of 218 posts

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

#161

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.

There's lots of actual war. Not all wars are world wars.

Edit: it's also not the point of my post. The US invests in its military partially under the pretense of existential threats (basically, commies invading the mainland). That is undermined by having an laughably easy to cripple defense.

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

#162

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.

>If people attacked our hospitals and pipelines with explosives we wouldn't sit by and do nothing.

You are proposing that we attack them with explosives, are you fine with them retaliating in kind?

What if you lived next to some hackers targeting a foreign country, would you think it's acceptable to get blown up for their actions?

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

#163
post #137

I’d be curious to know how much ransom is being asked. Before Bitcoin something this big was impossible to try and pull off.

Before the bitcoin you would ask for release of prisoners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_Flight_615 or get steady funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal https://www.rferl.org/a/carlos_the_jackal_on_trial_for_1980s...

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

#164

"This is as close as you can get to the jugular of infrastructure in the United States," said Amy Myers Jaffe, research professor and managing director of the Climate Policy Lab. "It's not a major pipeline. It's the pipeline." About that infrastructure security... this forum has gone over in detail the situation of infrastructure security in quite a bit of detail as other stuff has happened. It's easy to say "you nee…

Companies like this are tax dodges that socialize risk. The limited partners enjoy fat returns with minimal downside.

I'm not sure about these, but there are public limited partnerships that anyone can buy like a stock.

If you don't realize what you are getting into, you may regret it because you will get a K-1 at tax time.

I don't know if it's any more of a tax dodge than an REIT.

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

#165

So, two possible responses by the government to the current increase in these kinds of attacks: 1) blame the lack of computer security in our infrastructure, and work on improving that 2) blame cybercurrencies, and try to eliminate them Any bets on which one our government will choose?

Both options sound sane, so I guess it will be

3) blame Russia/China

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

#166
post #64
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you use a unidirectional connection for time series and event data? I understand why you might want to send things out to the rest of the world, I can't fathom why you wouldn't require physical access to have write access.

Genuine question (that I've been seriously wondering about for a long time): how do you implement validated attestation that a piece of log data has reached nonvolatile storage, triggered appropriate alarms, and that those alarm events have been acknowledged, while using a data diode type setup?

If it is critical to have the log, it has to be local. Infrastructure shouldn't die if an internet connection goes down.

You can sent the status of the log out through the data diode, along with a copy of the data.

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

#167
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I understand your POV and can see why one might find some peace in it, but I don't. More crime, or I suppose mroe news about it, so we know how much crime costs? More attacks make us safer? It's a means justify the ends argument, but it doesn't hold water. It's eerily similar to "burn it all down" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism , which, itself is on the rise and burning from both ends. I infer…

Trust and integrity are irrelevant when it comes to professional cyber criminals who likely live in another country. Continually escalating cyber attacks are our new reality. There is no possible way to prevent the attackers from trying. Thus the only option is to harden our systems. I expect after a few major crises involving mass casualties or major economic losses the federal government will mandate that private i…

It's absurd to suggest there is only one option.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main purpose of government is to protect its citizens from foreign invaders. I don't see any difference here.

So then you're up against the halting problem at the "digital border" and you've only reduced the problem to say one in 300 million. There are many differences. I already mentioned locality and scale. Another is that it's possible to make secure software (aka math) that precludes undesirable behavior a priori, whereas such thing is impossible in the real world.

A) It's not a halting problem. B) Digital borders exist all over the net. We use them every day to secure all sorts of things.

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

#169
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you explained doesn't solve the problem. You still want to have an unidirectional network in place at least between your critical infrastructure to the monitoring systems. Monitoring systems are usually separate and often have their dedicated network too, but they still need some sort of network connection to your critical infrastructure to do their job (monitoring).

If you put a data diode between your infrastructure and the internet, you can see the status from anywhere, yet never compromise it from the outside.

Yes, I think we are on the same page.

I was trying to explain that having a separate monitoring infra and network group wouldn't work as a replacement for unidirectional network setup, because you sill need to open network access between critical infra and the monitoring system in your design, which will expose it to the internet.

So like you said, you still need to have an unidirectional network in place.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the society I want. I don't want stronger doors everywhere. Tougher locks everywhere. Onerous security everywhere. I prefer a society where passengers are free to chit chat with the pilots when they aren't busy. Where children who might be interested in being a pilot can see a cockpit in the air and how it's done. I remember reading about the history of security in ancient Rome. The lengths to which normal…

Do I want security cameras/metal detectors/metal doors and other police state security measures everywhere? No. Do I want to have all that in electrical plants/pipelines/nuclear reactors and other objects of critical infrastructure - yes. If that means employees there would need to spend more time for annoying security checks(additional password prompts, 2FA, metal detectors, etc) - sure, I did all of that when worki…

Those things already exist in electrical plants/pipelines/nuclear reactors and other objects of critical infrastructure. Eliminating the ability of people to casually enter and access/alter/destroy this infrastructure isn't the issue.

And yeah... we exactly can say that. We do it all the time. We almost blew up the world because Russia sent some missiles to Cuba.

There's no reason the digital war can't have physical repercussions. If a foreign nation invades our digital properties, we drop a bomb on their electric plant.

Simple as that.

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