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The Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Hackers Had a Secret Weapon: Self-Promoting Cybersecurity Firms  (Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden, MIT Technology Review)
Five months before DarkSide attacked the Colonial pipeline, two researchers discovered a way to rescue its ransomware victims. Then an antivirus company’s announcement alerted the hackers.
By publicizing its tool, Bitdefender alerted DarkSide to the lapse, which involved reusing the same digital keys to lock and unlock multiple victims.
“Special thanks to BitDefender for helping fix our issues,” DarkSide said. “This will make us even better.”

In Post-Pandemic Europe, Migrants Will Face Digital Fortress  (AP)
As the world begins to travel again, Europe is sending migrants a loud message: Stay away!
Greek border police are firing bursts of deafening noise from an armored truck over the frontier into Turkey. Mounted on the vehicle, the long-range acoustic device, or “sound cannon,” is the size of a small TV set but can match the volume of a jet engine.
It’s part of a vast array of physical and experimental new digital barriers being installed and tested during the quiet months of the coronavirus pandemic at the 200-kilometer (125-mile) Greek border with Turkey to stop people entering the European Union illegally.

Biden Aims to Rebuild and Expand Legal Immigration  (Michael D. Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, New York Times)
Documents obtained by The New York Times show far-reaching efforts by President Biden to remake the immigration system and undo much of his predecessor’s legacy.

How to Negotiate with Ransomware Hackers  (Rachel Monroe, New Yorker)
In the past year, a surge of ransomware attacks has made a disruptive period even more difficult. In December, the acting head of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that ransomware was “quickly becoming a national emergency.” Hackers hit vaccine manufacturers and research labs. Hospitals lost access to chemotherapy protocols; school districts cancelled classes. Companies scrambling to accommodate a fully remote workforce found themselves newly vulnerable to hackers. In May, an attack by the ransomware group DarkSide forced the shutdown of Colonial Pipeline’s network, which supplies fuel to much of the East Coast. The shutdown, which pushed up gas prices and led to a spate of panic-buying, put a spotlight on ransomware’s potential to disable critical infrastructure. A week after the attack, once Colonial paid a ransom of $4.4 million to get its systems back online, eighty per cent of gas stations in Washington, D.C., still had no fuel.
The F.B.I. advises victims to avoid negotiating with hackers, arguing that paying ransoms incentivizes criminal behavior. This puts victims in a tricky position. “To just tell a hospital that they can’t pay—I’m just incredulous at the notion,” Philip Reiner, the C.E.O. of the nonprofit Institute for Security and Technology, told me. “What do you expect them to do, just shut down and let people die?” (Cont.)