[ExI] colonial pipeline shutdown

[William Flynn Wallace]

"If you can build it, I can hack it."   Is that true?  Are we ever, ever
going to have a secure web so that enemies can't shut down anything they
want to?   bill w

On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 10:40 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, 12 Jun 2021 at 01:03, spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I didn’t follow this story very closely but what I heard doesn’t make
>> sense.
>>
>>
>>
>> Some hackers somehow installed ransomware on the Colonial Pipeline system
>> which caused a shutdown, resulting in fuel shortages on the east coast, but
>> the company paid the ransom in bitcoins and got it back running again.
>> That part makes sense, but the next part doesn’t.
>>
>>
>>
>> According to some sources, the FBI managed to get the money back somehow.
>>
>>
>>
>> Are there bitcoin hipsters among us who can explain how the FBI could do
>> that?  Is it not true that bitcoin is secure?  If the FBI can get money
>> from criminals, it can get money from anyone who it says is a criminal,
>> ja?  If so, the premise behind bitcoin has been demonstrated false or
>> flawed, so its value should have taken a steep dive.  I see that it did
>> right when the pipeline shut down, but not when the story broke that the
>> FBI had recovered some of the money.
>>
>>
>>
>> I don’t understand.
>>
> The FBI has not explained what exactly it did, but hacks of exchanges’ and
> individuals’ Bitcoins happen on a regular basis, by getting into their
> system and gaining access to their keys. It is a computer security failing,
> not a failing of the Bitcoin protocol.
>
>> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
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>
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