Colonial Ransomware redefines our approach

<p>2021-05-15 Show 1113 - How the Colonial Pipeline changed Ransomware forever</p> <p>Craig Peterson: Hey, wherever you are, whatever you're doing right now. I know you're listening, and I appreciate you being with us. Of course, this is Craig Peterson. I've been in cybersecurity now for 30 years, and we're going to talk about what's really happening with this Colonial Pipeline ransom. <br /> [00:00:16]This whole hack, if you will, of what's been happening with this Colonial Pipeline. Cyberattack is very upsetting to me. Let's just really briefly because I've talked about it before. Talk about what happened. What is ransomware? Ransomware is software that the bad guys get onto your computers.<br /> [00:00:40] Now it's changed over the years. When ransomware first started hitting, I think most people still have this in mind, and the software gets onto your computer. Usually, you click on something. You download a zip file, and you open it up. Maybe it's a Microsoft word document and embedded inside that document.<br /> [00:01:00] Is a piece of nastiness, and that nastiness is the ransomware. And what it'll do on your machine is it'll start looking for files that it can encrypt. And those files typically are things like your word documents, your Excel spreadsheets, all that sort of stuff. And. They would encrypt it and then pop up on your screen, a nice little red warning message that all your files have been encrypted.<br /> [00:01:31] And if you really want to get those files back, what you're going to have to do is go to this particular website, send some Bitcoin to this specific Bitcoin wallet. And then hopefully, you'll be okay. Now, back in the day, it was crossing your fingers cause you didn't know what was going to happen.<br /> [00:01:52] If I send the money while I get the decryption key, will the software work while I get all my files back. And frankly, the answer to most of those questions was no. In most cases, you would not get all your files back in this day and age. It's changed slightly, but we'll