Colonial Pipeline reportedly paid almost $5 million to the hackers responsible for the cyberattack that forced the shutdown of its gas infrastructure.
Colonial Pipeline paid the ransom amount using cryptocurrency within hours of the attack, highlighting the pressure the company faced to get gas flowing again to customers on the East Coast, according to Bloomberg.
This contradicts reports from earlier this week that the company had no plans of paying a fee to decrypt important data files and help get the gas pipeline up and running again.
After receiving the ransom amount, the hackers gave Colonial Pipeline a decrypting tool to get access to its data again and restore the broken network. However, the hackers’ tool was so slow and ineffective that the company used its own data backups to help bring the system back to life, Bloomberg reported.
The FBI confirmed on Monday that DarkSide ransomware was responsible for the Colonial Pipeline attack. DarkSide is a group of organized hackers selling software hacking tools to other criminals to carry out attacks on wealthy organizations and entities, according to the cybersecurity firm Cybereason.
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The FBI discourages companies from paying ransom to hackers.
“Paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee you or your organization will get any data back. It also encourages perpetrators to target more victims and offers an incentive for others to get involved in this type of illegal activity,” the FBI says in its guidance.
The Colonial Pipeline is the largest gas pipeline in the country, with 5,500 miles of pipeline from Texas to New Jersey, and delivers 45% of the fuel for the East Coast.
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The company announced it restarted operations on Wednesday, but the cyberattack has already caused severe gas shortages in the South for multiple days this week.
