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AAA warns on gas prices, North Carolina invokes emergency as hackers apologize
- xd1936 5y agoA 68K news scrape of a Google News redirect of a Newsweek article. Original: https://www.newsweek.com/aaa-warns-gas-prices-north-carolina-invokes-emergency-colonial-hackers-apologize-1590281 https://www.newsweek.com/aaa-warns-gas-prices-north-carolina...
- tnzm 5y agoArguably, the scrape is better than the original.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y agoThe moment they realize they made a grave tactical error by interrupting the US fuel supply must have been terrifying. They painted a big X on their backs and will probably never find peace again.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 5y ago"We're just ordinary criminals, not political criminals" Fair enough. Off to jail with the lot of you then. Making money has nothing to do with what these guys do they are stealing money.
- jMyles 5y agoIf attacks of this nature are possible, they will happen. The problem is that they are possible. There is no excuse for the state of security - either in software or administration, or both - that leaves these vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited.
- Black101 5y agoThey opt for convenience instead of security... Infrastructure like this should not be able to be controlled remotely... but of course this is common sense.
- ctdonath 5y agoApology? It’s time for Congress to “issue letters of marque and reprisal”.
- sudhirj 5y ago"Oops, no, sorry, we didn't mean declare war on the US. Didn't realise that oil would stop moving when we attacked an oil pipeline. Please don't send the Special Forces after us. All we wanted was some BTC to trade for Doge. How do we restart this level?" Sounds like kids who got in way over their heads.
- 1970-01-01 5y agoI wonder when a future talking point for an electric car salesmen will be "immunity to fuel emergencies"
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoPower outages are also a thing...
- chaorace 5y agoCan you imagine accidentally compromising critical government infrastructure? I could almost see this being the premise for a stage play or a Terry Pratchett novel...
- TchoBeer 5y agoI'm imagining a story about a group of teenage hackers who accidentally put ransomware on important government infrastructure and the government offers them a ton of money so they have to pretend to be a serious hacking organization to keep up face
- sigmaprimus 5y ago>"We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics, do not need to tie us with a defined government and look for other our motives.. .. for more information about our organization please visit www....click downl9ad and choose run, the site can only be viewed after agreeing to these terms." I wonder if it was Warez, Pr0n, or phishing that fooled the employee into loading the malware.
- cout 5y agoHow typical is it for an apology/statement of this nature after an event makes the news? Is there any precedent?
- gostsamo 5y agoThe hackers who locked an hospital and caused the death of a woman in Germany also promised to be more careful next time.
- tnzm 5y agoThe real question is did the hospital promise to be more careful next time
- gostsamo 5y agoAccording to the Geneva convention, hospitals are not targeted. Maybe we shall offer to drop that part and require hospitals to have their own anti-air defense.
- tnzm 5y agoMaybe we should. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_hospital_airstrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_hospital_airstrike
- gostsamo 5y agoI'm not even sure if you are joking or you are that out of touch with reality.
- tnzm 5y agoReality does seem quite inconsistent with itself lately. Maybe if I got in touch with it I could tell it to come back when it has fixed all its double standards. But I'm pretty sure it won't listen. If you wanna try and tell it that, don't start from me - I'm just along for the ride. Same as all the commenters who have no loved one in either hospital but are quick to propose clever solutions to spherical problems in vacuum
- bmmayer1 5y ago> "We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics, do not need to tie us with a defined government and look for other our motives," the group reportedly wrote. "Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society. From today we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences in the future." We truly do live in a simulation.
- Nbox9 5y agoImagine a world where the hackers form a union in order to have more input into their targets.
- divs1210 5y agoIf they didn’t say this, this could be construed as an attack on America and label them as enemies of the state or even terrorists.
- viraptor 5y agoI'm not sure declaring yourself apolitical would save you. The results are the same. Otherwise all terrorists would say "we're apolitical, we just wanted to get money off stock trades based on this news".
- gruez 5y agoThe definition of terrorism: >1. The deliberate commission of an act of violence to create public fear through the suffering of the victims in the furtherance of a political or social agenda. >2. The use of unlawful violence against people or property to achieve political objectives. >3. A form of psychological manipulation through warfare to the purpose of political or religious gains, by means of deliberately creating a climate of fear amongst the inhabitants of a specific geographical region If you don't have an agenda behind it, it's not terrorism.
- viraptor 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- asah 5y agohow much do y'all believe this was a "hacking group" and not state sponsored? (imho it depends on how sophisticated the attack... given the typical lameness of SCADA defenses, one can't assume...)
- yodelshady 5y agoHear hoofbeats, think horses. The skillset to compromise large enterprise networks is more readily available and more profitable than the skillset to compromise SCADA systems, and for all the flak they get, the culture at most large engineering firms in the West is extremely safety conscious. If it's not provably operating safely, it isn't. So it gets shut down. So you all need to do is deny the link between the actual control system and lines of engineering reporting.
- user-the-name 5y agoThere isn't a clear dividing line. What you have are criminal organisations who may get protection and shelter from governments in exchange for making attacks which are incidentally beneficial to that government.
- Enginerrrd 5y agoNot unlike the golden age of piracy with "privateers".
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agothe difference is that pirates clearly knew they were gambling with their lives hackers dont traditionally think that way..
- lebuffon 5y agoThey do now. :)
- Dylan16807 5y agoAs far as we know the attack didn't even touch the systems connected to hardware.
- user-the-name 5y agoBitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are entirely responsible for the massive epidemic of ransomware attacks we are currently weathering. Ransomware existed before bitcoin, but it was very limited in scope due to the difficulty of getting people to send money to the attackers without getting traced. Bitcoin has solved that, and even bitcoin exchanges are in on the grift, helping keep ransomware payments secret. Bitcoin is not only massively environmentally harmful, it is now also causing direct harm to society in many other ways, this situation being a prime example. Bitcoin needs to be banned, now. There is no ethical or moral way to keep dealing in bitcoin with the massive damage it is causing.
- logicchains 5y agoDo you believe people have a right to privacy in their financial transactions? Even if you don't, many people do, and prior to cryptocurrencies there was no way for people to conduct online transactions with privacy. By your logic, cash should be completely banned because some crimes wouldn't be possible if all transactions took place through police-monitored electronic systems. Encryption should be completely banned because without encryption it wouldn't be possible for criminals to communicate online.
- TomGullen 5y agoAnd by your logic, nothing should be banned. Collectors of nuclear weapons should be allowed to enjoy their hobby in peace. Obviously, the line is somewhere in the middle. I don't think banning Bitcoin is going to help at this stage as that Pandora's box is now open, but it's true Bitcoin is an insanely useful tool for extortion.
- Dylan16807 5y agoMaking pervasive tracking illegal would do so much more for purchase privacy than cryptocurrencies. On average it's still 99% impossible to conduct online transactions with privacy. > By your logic Nah, your extrapolations aren't really based in what they said.
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- tail_exchange 5y ago"Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society." You see, they just want to make money by extorting people with malwares, and not create problems for society. It's all forgiven.
- gwbas1c 5y ago> Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society By hacking the way they do, they are creating problems for society. It doesn't matter if it's a fuel pipeline or a bottling plant.
- silicon2401 5y agoThat doesn't change their point. It just means that creating problems for society may or may not be an acceptable consequence
- gwbas1c 5y agoRansomware is a problem for society.
- yabones 5y agoThe exact same thing happening to the grid is almost inevitable at this point. A complete grid collapse would take months to recover from. Not to say fuel infra shutdowns are bad, but a complete grid failure is far, far worse.
- lamontcg 5y agoAt some point we need to turn software engineering into actual engineering and less of an "art".
- aklemm 5y agoWhen will executives take responsibility and listen to their sec people?