Pool
Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount said during his opening remarks "I made the decision to pay" the ransomware hackers that shut down the pipeline last month.
He said it was "the hardest decision" he's ever made in his career, adding, "I believe with all my heart it was the right choice to make."
Blount said that his company worked with law enforcement "from the start" including the Department of Justice and FBI, which "may have lead to the recovery this week" of millions paid to the hackers.
Blount's public testimony comes a day after the DOJ announced that US investigators recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to hackers.
The company discovered the cyberattack on May 7 just before 5:00 a.m. when an employee found a ransom note on its IT network. The employee notified a supervisor who ordered the shutdown of the pipeline.
"Shutting down the pipeline was absolutely the right decision, and I stand by our employees’ decision to do what they were trained to do," Blount said in prepared remarks.
He said the decision was driven by the "imperative to isolate and contain the attack" to help ensure the malware on the IT network did not spread to the operational network, which controls the pipelines.
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
