Colonial's Cyber-Defenses Were In Place, But Compromised In Ransomware Attack - CEO

Colonial Pipeline has cyber-defense systems in place but they were compromised in a ransomware attack, the US company's CEO Joseph Blount said on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th June, 2021) Colonial Pipeline has cyber-defense systems in place but they were compromised in a ransomware attack, the US company's CEO Joseph Blount said on Tuesday.

"We had cyber-defenses in place but the unfortunate reality is that those defenses were compromised," Blount told US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in a testimony.

He said that hackers from the Darkside group encrypted the company's IT systems by exploiting "the legacy VPN profile that was not intended to be in use."

The ransomware attack caused a brief shutdown of the key pipeline transporting fuel to the US East Coast and forced Colonial to pay around $4.4 million to hackers allegedly based in Russia in exchange for encryption tools.