The new marauders

In early May, hackers shut down the computer networks of Colonial Pipeline, which supplies about 45 percent of the gasoline to the Southeastern U.S. As panic buying emptied gas stations throughout the region, Colonial paid $5 million in ransom to the intruders. Last week, the world’s largest meat producer, JBS, was forced to close slaughterhouses in the U.S., Canada, and Australia after a similar ransomware attack. Other recent attacks have targeted the New York subway system and a water treatment plant in Florida, and a wave of hacks paralyzed U.S. medical centers last year during the pandemic. Could ransomware attacks put the whole U.S. infrastructure at risk?

Dmitri Alperovitch is the co-founder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a nonprofit working on geopolitical cybersecurity; the co-founder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike; and the author of World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century. Alperovitch says ransomware attacks have blighted organizations around the world for years, but the Colonial and JBS episodes have drawn new attention to the problem because of their scale. They affected tens of millions of people. Seizures of critical infrastructure like these are now one of the United States’ top national-security threats, and it’s vital that U.S. President Joe Biden confronts Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Russia is a major haven for the criminal groups behind most attacks. Authorities need to put political pressure on Russia and deploy financial tools to stop the flow of ransom payments, Alperovitch says, because hackers can always find a way in …

Michael Bluhm: Are ransomware attacks getting worse?

Dmitri Alperovitch: These attacks have been going on for years. They’ve been increasing in frequency. It’s just that you’ve had two high-profile ones that have had a major impact on the daily life of every American—Colonial and JBS—in a way that others have not.