Cyber Operations

3Cyber and Crime

3.1 Cyber and Crime

Cybercrime – criminal activities carried out by means of computers or the internet. Cybercrime groups are active both before and during military operations. In addition, cybercrime was reported to have overtaken drug trafficking as the key method for financing terrorist enterprises by 2011 (Theohary and Rollins, 2011).

Waiting in gas station lines during the spring of 2021 woke up many Americans to the devastation possible through cybercrime. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack produced socio‐economic effects reminiscent of the 1973 Saudi oil embargo, resulting in delays and potential gasoline shortages unimagined by the current generation of Americans.

The Darkside cyber‐criminal group shut down the U.S. East Coast for five days by performing a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, a company that transports 2.5 million gallons of gas and oil per day, over 29,000 miles of pipeline, from the Gulf of Mexico to the U.S. East Coast.

The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack debilitated the U.S. East Coast when the Darkside ransomware group encrypted 100 GB of front office financial data and was paid 75 bitcoin, worth approximately $5 million (Perlroth, 2021), after holding the data ransom for five days were from May 6, 2020 to May 12, 2020 (William Turton, 2021). Prior to this event, most Americans had never heard of ransomware, the Darkside or Colonial Pipeline, much less a gasoline shortage.

In attacking the Colonial Pipeline operations, ...