US declares emergency in 17 states over cyber fuel attack

A ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline networks prompted the US to declare a state of emergency in 17 states .

The news comes as the The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed that ransomware attack is responsible for shutting down one of the country's largest pipelines over the weekend. The attack forced the Colonial Pipelien company to close the 8.800-kilometer fuel pipeline that starts in the city of Houston, Texas and ends in the port of New York. Of course, there was panic but also concerns about the vulnerability of US energy infrastructure to cyber attacks.

The States and jurisdictions affected Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Mississippi, NY New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

The issue is serious as these states are likely to run out of fossil fuels of all kinds, and cause problems in air, vehicle traffic, etc. They try to cover the burden of supplying the market with tankers.

Colonial Pipeline continues to work in partnership with cyber experts, law enforcement, and other federal , για την αποκατάσταση λειτουργιών του αγωγού γρήγορα και με ασφάλεια. Η κυβέρνηση των ΗΠΑ δήλωσε τη χθες την Δευτέρα ότι δεν υπάρχουν στοιχεία που να υποδηλώνουν ότι η Ρωσία συμμετείχε στην επίθεση ransomware.

On the other hand the extortionists are a group titled as Darkside and its administrators left a saying the following: “We are apolitical, we don't participate in geopolitics, you don't need to associate us with a specific government and look for other motives. Our goal is to make money and not create problems in society.”

The Darkside team is a relatively new player in the ransomware game. Nevertheless, it already has quite a reputation in analyst circles as a professional and organized team. The group has a telephone number and a help desk to facilitate negotiations with its victims!!. They also seem to put a lot of effort into information of their victims, not only technical information about their environment, but more general information about the company itself, such as the size and estimated revenue of the organization.

DarkSide's motive is to issue corporate-style press releases to Tor to showcase professionalism in its criminal activities.

The Colonial Pipeline incident is the latest cyber attack on the US government in recent months, following the SolarWinds violations by rather Russian agents and the exploitation of Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities by the Chinese.

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Written by Dimitris

Dimitris hates on Mondays .....

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