Computer Security News and Insights
In April 2021, the Colonial Pipeline hadn't yet made global headlines — but the SolarWinds breach was still fresh, and the Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities had just rattled tens of thousands of organizations. Every one of those incidents had something in common: the affected organizations either ignored or incompletely
The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack this week shut down fuel distribution across the Eastern United States. One attack. One compromised password. Millions of people affected. If you needed a reason to pursue an online computer security degree in 2021, you're watching it play out on live television right
In April 2021, a misconfigured cloud storage bucket at a major Android app developer exposed the personal data of over 100 million users. Names, emails, passwords, chat messages — all sitting in plain view because someone forgot to toggle a single setting. This wasn't an exotic zero-day exploit. It
A Pipeline Went Dark — Because One Person Clicked On May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline — the largest fuel pipeline in the United States — shut down operations after a ransomware attack. The disruption caused fuel shortages across the southeastern U.S. and triggered panic buying. While the full forensic details are still
On May 7, 2021 — less than a week ago — Colonial Pipeline shut down 5,500 miles of fuel infrastructure after a ransomware attack that started with a single compromised credential. One password. No multi-factor authentication. An entire region's fuel supply disrupted. This is the kind of incident that
Colonial Pipeline just shut down 5,500 miles of fuel infrastructure this week. One compromised password. That's all it took. While forensic details are still emerging, the early reporting points to a single set of stolen credentials — likely obtained through a social engineering attack on an employee. If
The Colonial Pipeline Attack Started with a Single Compromised Credential As I write this, Colonial Pipeline is still scrambling to restore fuel delivery to the southeastern United States after a ransomware attack that shut down 5,500 miles of pipeline. The FBI confirmed DarkSide as the threat actor. While the
A Single Email Cost This Company $100 Million In 2019, a Lithuanian man named Evaldas Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to stealing over $100 million from Google and Facebook using nothing more than phishing emails. He impersonated a legitimate hardware vendor, sent fake invoices, and both tech giants paid up — for years.
In 2020, Twitter lost control of 130 high-profile accounts — including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — because a 17-year-old used spear phishing to trick a handful of Twitter employees into handing over internal credentials. The attackers didn't blast a million inboxes with a generic "Your account has
In March 2021, a single phishing email led to a credential theft incident at a mid-size manufacturing firm in Ohio. The attacker impersonated the CEO, asked the controller to update direct deposit information, and walked away with $1.7 million. The email had two typos, a slightly wrong domain, and
