May 12 2021, 08:49

Last night I went out hunting for gasoline. Apparently, some Russian hackers (according to the FBI) or non-Russian hackers (according to Biden) recently broke a pipeline across half the country, and as of yesterday, more than half of the gas stations were depleted. I barely (on the fourth try) found a gas station with a long line, which only had ultra 93 for $3.5 per gallon (usually, we pay $2.8). The state governor has declared a state of emergency. We don’t have public transportation in our areas, and stores are not within walking distance, so it’s really bad for many. The government has now allocated money and introduced tax breaks to fuel companies to give them more flexibility in supplying gas stations.

We are observing. In fact, it looks like the IT guys just missed a virus (ransomware), and it seems that the information security there was below par (roughly speaking, like staff listening to Spotify and surfing the web on critical process computers). And then one day, the computer doesn’t boot up, displaying the message “give us money or we won’t turn it on.” And here again the question arises – what about backups? What about a contingency plan? So, I really don’t see anyone’s fault except for colonial pipeline. Of course, it is not excluded that the virus was written for a specific target, and somewhere social engineering worked. But that’s what security experts are hired for.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2021/05/11/colonial-pipeline-cyberattack-ransom-what-we-know-gas-shortage/5035040001/

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