For the owners and operators of the Colonial Pipeline, the resumption of normal operations following an attack of ransomware probably brought little pleasure. Not least because, according to an official, they had paid up to $5 million to the attackers in ransom in the process. But to have one’s business entirely paralysed in this way is not so much a wake up call, as it has been fashionable to call it, as a time to get serious.
Instead, it is a notice of near-term danger. These sorts of attacks are often linked, either speculatively or directly, to states – and hacks of large American software and companies are normally attributed to expansionist foes like Russia and to China. To think, this one was apparently done by amateurs.
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James Snell 