Colonial Pipeline | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has proposed a penalty of nearly $1 million to Colonial Pipeline for violating federal safety regulations, worsening the impact of the ransomware attack last year. The $986,400 penalty is the result of an inspection conducted by the regulator of the pipeline operator's control room management ( CRM ) procedures from January through November 2020. The PHMSA  said  that "a probable failure to adequately plan and prepare for manual shutdown and restart of its pipeline system [...] contributed to the national impacts when the pipeline remained out of service after the May 2021 cyberattack." Colonial Pipeline, operator of the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, was forced to temporarily take its systems offline in the wake of a  DarkSide ransomware attack  in early May 2021, disrupting gas supply and prompting a  regional emergency declaration  across 17 states. ...

In a major blow, the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday said it has recovered 63.7 bitcoins (currently valued at $2.3 million) paid by Colonial Pipeline to the DarkSide ransomware extortionists on May 8, pursuant to a seizure warrant that was authorized by the Northern District of California. The  ransomware attack  also hobbled the pipeline company's fuel supply, prompting the government to issue an  emergency declaration , even as the company shelled out a ransom amount of approximately  75 bitcoins  ($4.4 million as of May 8) to regain access to its systems. A week after the highly publicized incident, the ransomware-as-a-service syndicate disbanded with a May 14 farewell message to affiliates, stating that its internet servers and cryptocurrency stash were  seized  by unknown law enforcement entities. While DarkSide's announcement was perceived as an exit scam, the latest move from DoJ confirms earlier speculations of law enforcement involvem...

The ransomware cartel that masterminded the  Colonial Pipeline attack  early last month crippled the pipeline operator's network using a compromised virtual private network (VPN) account password, the latest investigation into the incident has revealed. The development, which was  reported  by Bloomberg on Friday, involved gaining an initial foothold into the networks as early as April 29 through the VPN account, which allowed employees to access the company's networks remotely. The VPN login — which didn't have multi-factor protections on — was unused but active at the time of the attack, the report said, adding the password has since been discovered inside a batch of leaked passwords on the dark web, suggesting that an employee of the company may have reused the same password on another account that was previously breached. It's, however, unclear how the password was obtained, Charles Carmakal, senior vice president at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, was quote...

If you invite guest users into your Entra ID tenant, you may be opening yourself up to a surprising risk.  A gap in access control in Microsoft Entra's subscription handling is allowing guest users to create and transfer subscriptions into the tenant they are invited into, while maintaining full ownership of them.  All the guest user needs are the permissions to create subscriptions in their home tenant, and an invitation as a guest user into an external tenant. Once inside, the guest user can create subscriptions in their home tenant, transfer them into the external tenant, and retain full ownership rights. This stealthy privilege escalation tactic allows a guest user to gain a privileged foothold in an environment where they should only have limited access. Many organizations treat guest accounts as low-risk based on their temporary, limited access, but this behavior, which works as designed, opens the door to known attack paths and lateral movement within the resource t...