US PIPELINE COMPANY PAYS $5M RANSOM TO CYBER HACKERS

Colonial Pipeline, the US company whose 5,500-mile petrol pipeline was paralysed last week by hackers, paid nearly $5m in ransom to free up its system, Bloomberg has reported. The Bloomberg report contradicted a Reuters report earlier this week that Colonial did not plan to pay the ransom. That earlier report identified Colonial’s cyber insurers as certain Lloyd’s underwriters, Axa XL and Beazley. It remained unclear whether the insurers are covering the ransom payment. US officials and cybersecurity experts have tied the attack to Russian gang called DarkSide that is thought to operate from Eastern Europe. The attack, one of 80 that DarkSide has engineered since last August, crippled the largest fuel pipeline in the US. The hack caused thousands of petrol stations in the southeast US to run out of fuel this week before the system’s operations were restarted on Wednesday.