Colonial Pipeline CEO Says Paying Ransom Was 'Right Thing To Do For Country'
Joseph Blount, Colonial Pipeline CEO, told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that paying $4.4 million to ransomware attackers was "the right thing to do for the country," as the company didn't know the full extent of the attack on the pipeline system that is responsible for delivering 45% of the East Coast's gasoline.
Blount said that Colonial Pipeline consulted with experts who were familiar with Darkside, the group who attacked the pipeline, prior to paying the ransom. The FBI does not recommend that victims of ransomware attacks pay off the attackers as it may encourage further attacks.
"I know that's a highly controversial decision," Blount said to the Wall Street Journal. "I didn't make it lightly. I will admit that I wasn't comfortable seeing money go out the door to people like this."

For more reporting by the Associated Press see below.
Many victims of ransomware attacks, where hackers demand large sums of money to decrypt stolen data or to prevent it from being leaked online, opt to pay.
Multiple sources had confirmed to The Associated Press that Colonial Pipeline had paid the criminals who committed the cyberattack a ransom of nearly $5 million in cryptocurrency for the software decryption key required to unscramble their data network.
A ransom payment of 75 Bitcoin was paid the day after the criminals locked up Colonial's corporate network, according to Tom Robinson, co-founder of the cryptocurrency-tracking firm Elliptic. Prior to Robinson's blog post, two people briefed on the case had confirmed the payment amount to AP.
Blount told the Journal the attack was discovered around 5:30 a.m. on May 7. It took Colonial about an hour to shut down the pipeline, which has 260 delivery points across 13 states and Washington, D.C., Blount said. That helped prevent the infection from potentially migrating to the pipeline's operational controls.
Colonial, which is based in Alpharetta, Georgia, halted fuel supplies for nearly a week. That led to panic-buying and shortages at gas stations from Washington, D.C. to Florida.
Colonial restarted its pipeline a week ago, but it took time to resume a full delivery schedule, and the panic-buying led to gasoline shortages. More than 9,500 gas stations were out of fuel on Wednesday, including half of the gas stations in D.C. and 40% of stations in North Carolina, according to Gasbuddy.com, which tracks fuel prices and station outages.
