F-Secure comment on US fuel pipeline attack
May 2021 by F-Secure
Following the news of the US fuel pipeline attack and Biden’s response, Calvin Gan, Senior Manager with F-Secure’s Tactical Defense Unit comments the following:
“We used to separate cyber crime versus physical world crime and view the impact differently. Even legislation is more documented for physical crime, compared to cyber crime where we are now slowly maturing. However, if there’s one thing the pandemic has changed, is the acceleration rate of cyber crime. With convergence of technologies being connected through the Internet, we now have a concrete view of how cyber crime impact has spread not only across the Internet but also to the physical world.
Attacks such as ransomware on CNI is just one example of how cyber crime can affect people directly or indirectly. With emergency laws needed to be passed to respond to cyber attacks, this is a clear sign that there is now increased interest by attackers to target these industries. The larger the impact to people or nations, the more pressure it is for these organizations to pay up or act upon the breach. This serves as motivation for attackers to continuously target them because they know it has the ability to push them “into the corner” of paying up.
While it’s easier said than done, reducing a successful attack is a role to be played by everyone and comes in all angles; from increased user general awareness to beefing up security measures in organizations, and having the right response plan in place with law enforcement being better equipped to track cyber criminals, and legislation being more robust in prosecuting cyber criminals. We should perceive cyber criminals similar to how we perceive a criminal in the physical world”.