New York (AFP)
The boss of the US oil pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that he had authorized the payment of a ransom of $ 4.4 million to hackers who carried out a cyber attack on the network. may's beginning.
"I know it was a very controversial decision (...) I admit that I was not comfortable with seeing money evaporate and go to such people", said declared Joseph Blount.
"But it was the right thing to do for the country," he told the daily.
The payment of a ransom had been mentioned by several American media in recent days, but Colonial Pipeline had so far not confirmed this information.
Mr. Blount did not, however, give details of how the negotiations would unfold and how they would be settled.
Several sources claimed that the ransom was paid in bitcoins.
The leader of Colonial Pipeline, at the head of the company since 2017, defended his decision, believing that it was for his group the most effective way to restart its operations.
The company, which transports nearly half of America's petroleum products from the Gulf of Mexico to the east coast of the United States, was the victim of ransomware on May 7, a program that exploits security holes to encrypt data. computer systems and demand a ransom to unlock them.
According to US police, the DarkSide cybercriminals group is behind this attack.
This forced the operator, whose network includes more than 8,800 kilometers of pipelines transporting fuel, to suspend all of its operations, which had never happened before.
Last Saturday, Colonial Pipeline announced a return to normalcy of its operations.
Blount, however, pointed out that the restoration work would go on for months and cost the company tens of millions of dollars.
On Tuesday, Colonial Pipeline was again facing computer problems, but assured that they were in no way related to the hack and that they had not prevented the distribution of refined products.
© 2021 AFP