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Colonial Pipeline paid hackers nearly $5 million in ransom: Bloomberg News
Colonial Pipeline paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday after a crippling cyberattack that shut the largest fuel pipeline network in the United States, Bloomberg News reported, citing two people familiar with the transaction.
The company paid the ransom in untraceable cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, according to the report.
Colonial Pipeline declined to comment.
Whether targets of such attacks should pay to regain control of their systems is a matter of fierce debate. Critics contend that paying ransom encourages attacks.
U.S. House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday ransom should not be paid by companies that are the victims of cyber attacks.
The hackers provided Colonial Pipeline with a decrypting tool to restore its disabled computer network after they received the payment, but the company used its own backups to help restore the system since the tool was slow, Bloomberg News reported.
After a six-day outage, the top U.S. fuel pipeline, which carries 100 million gallons per day of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, moved some of the first millions of gallons of motor fuels on Thursday.
The shutdown caused gasoline shortages and emergency declarations from Virginia to Florida, led two refineries to curb production and had airlines reshuffling some refueling operations.
The FBI earlier this week accused a shadowy criminal gang called DarkSide for the ransomware attack. The group has not directly taken credit, but on Wednesday it claimed to have breached systems at three other companies.
A terse news release posted to DarkSide’s website did not directly mention Colonial Pipeline but, under the heading “About the latest news,” it noted that “our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society”.
The White House declined to weigh in on Monday whether companies that are hacked such as Colonial Pipeline should pay ransom to their attackers, but a national security official said it may offer some advice in the future.
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Magnitude 5.2 quake jolts Afghanistan
An earthquake measuring a magnitude of 5.2 on the Richter Scale jolted Afghanistan on Thursday afternoon, the National Center for Seismology reported.
The quake was at a depth of 70km and epicentered in the mountainous north-eastern area of Ashkāsham.
The jolt was felt across the region including in Kabul, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan
There were no immediate reports of any casualties.
In October last year, over 2,000 people were killed when four 6.3-magnitude earthquakes struck in Herat province.
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Bayat Foundation helps needy families in Balkh
As part of Bayat Foundation’s Ramadan aid campaign, needy families in Mazar-e-Sharif, in Balkh province, received much needed food packages this week.
The aid package includes rice, flour and oil.
“In continuation of Bayat Foundation’s assistance, this time also a quantity of food such as flour, oil and rice was distributed to needy families in Mazar-e-Sharif; Inshallah, these contributions will continue,” said a representative of the foundation.
Needy families that received aid packages expressed their gratitude but called on other aid organizations to help the needy during these difficult times.
“Many thanks to Bayat Foundation, I thank Bayat Foundation for helping the needy and poor people of this region,” said a recipient said.
“I would like to thank Bayat Foundation for their cooperation in helping the needy in this holy month of Ramadan; it is hoped that traders and charities will do such sustainable work,” said another recipient.
Bayat Foundation is one of the charitable organizations that has played an important role in helping the needy in Afghanistan over the last two decades.
In addition to distributing aid packages to needy and vulnerable families, it has carried out numerous other projects, including the construction of health centers and schools.
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MoI registers over 8,700 criminal cases in the past six months
Abdul Matin Qani, the Ministry of Interior’s spokesman said on Thursday that in the last six months, 8,747 criminal cases have been recorded across the country.
Addressing a press conference in Kabul, Qani said of these cases, 7,233 have been solved while the remaining 1,525 are still being investigated.
He said 12,540 people have been arrested in connection with these crimes.
In addition, 21 kidnappers have been killed, 18 hostages have been freed and 172 people have been arrested in connection with kidnappings in the same period of time.
Qani also said in the last six months 837,000 passports have been distributed. He said three new passport offices will be established in Kabul in the near future.
“10,000 passports are distributed to citizens daily by the Passport Department,” said Qani.
On the issue of narcotics, he said drug cultivation, production and trafficking has been eradicated. He said drug manufacturing equipment and 377 drug factories have been destroyed across the country.
According to him, the ministry has also made advances in collecting illegal weapons, fighting corruption and improving police skills.
Qani stated that during this period, no security incidents took place in most provinces across the country.
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