Colonial Pipeline reportedly paid European hackers $5 million ransom last week after the criminal group hacked the company.
The Colonial Pipeline is back online, but while we fill our cars with gas, the hackers lined their pockets with ransom money.
American infrastructure should not be some stagecoach to be held up at gunpoint by foreign hackers.
We need answers. This can never happen again.
— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) May 13, 2021
Advertisement - story continues below
The New York Post reported:
Colonial Pipeline forked over nearly $5 million last week to the Eastern European criminal group that hacked the company, shuttering the largest oil pipeline in the US, spurring widespread gas shortages and panic buying across the Southeast.
Bloomberg News reported that Colonial coughed up the ransom just hours after the ransomware attack took place on Friday.
Advertisement - story continues below
The Alpharetta, Georgia-based company paid the ransom in untraceable cryptocurrency, Bloomberg reported, citing two people familiar with the transaction.
Once the hackers received the payment, they provided Colonial with a decrypting tool to restore its downed IT network, according to the outlet, which reported the fix was so slow that the company opted to use its own backups to help restore the system…
…The FBI believes that the crippling cyberattack was orchestrated by a Russia-based criminal group called DarkSide.
