Colonial Pipeline Security Incident

Colonial Oil Pipeline Hack Confirmed to be DarkSide The FBI confirmed on 10 May 2021 that the oil pipeline ransomware attack on 8 May 2021 against Colonial Pipeline was conducted by the Darkside ransomware group. The Darkside Group claimed responsibility for the attack on their website and offered a statement of remorse. Colonial Pipeline is the largest oil product pipeline operator in the United States, and the attack forced shutdown of all their operations. To avoid greater impact, the company has proactively cut off business system networks to prevent spread of the malware to operational industrial control systems (ICS). Colonial then suspended all pipeline operations until they are sure that no ICS networks are compromised. Operations will slowly be brought back online with hope of full operations by the end of the week. According to BBC news , the criminal group planted malware on the target system in order to demand a ransom, hijacked nearly 100GB of the company's data, and threatened that if the payment is not made, the data will be leaked to the Internet. Image Source Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-attack/ What is Darkside Ransomware? Sangfor reported on the DarkSide ransomware group as early as September 2020. The DarkSide group is one of the leading providers of ransomware as a service (RaaS). In recent years, the criminal activities of the ransomware group have grown rapidly, and the victims are often unwilling to take the risk of not paying the high ransom. This actually helped the DarkSide group to become a more professional and customer service-oriented organization. They even provide a help desk with a call-in phone number for victims. DarkSides website has a section called DarkSide Leaks where the hackers have posted the private data of over 40 victims that they have stolen from. And although the ransomware group is developing a professional demeanor, they still carry out double extortion, where the hackers...

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