After a cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline spurred a fuel shortage, panic-buying and a spike in gas prices along much of the East Coast earlier this month, the CEO admitted to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that he authorized paying the ransom to those responsible. The incident highlighted the risk that ransomware attacks can pose, from utility companies to hospitals to television stations and beyond. In for Jim Braude, Adam Reilly was joined by Nicole Perlroth, cybersecurity reporter for The New York Times and author of “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race.”
“To see an American president get up there last week and go to the podium and talk about a ransomware attack is unprecedented. That is progress,” Perloth said about the response to the Colonial Pipeline attack. “There’s no silver bullet. These are really hard problems. Our cyber vulnerability is vast and only getting more so as we plug in millions more devices to the Internet.”
WATCH: Colonial Pipeline and the growing risk of cyberattacks