Another US pipeline company was attacked in the same month as Colonial. However, the company kept it secret, so nobody knew about it until now.
The news came out when a hacker leaked over 70GB of data from LineStart Integrity Services on the dark web this week.
The massive amount of data was stolen from LineStar Integrity was posted by a hacking group called Xing Team on their dark website.
LineStart Integrity Services is based in Houston, and are involved in selling, auditing, maintenance, compliances, and technology services for various pipeline companies.
The data leak was first noticed by a WikiLeaks-style group calling itself Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets, Wired wrote.
The database contained 73,500 emails, contracts, and accounting files. It also had 19GB of software data and codes and 10GB of human resources files, including employee Social Security cards.
Brett Callow, a security researcher with antivirus firm Emsisoft, said that the hackers used a rebranded version of Mount Locker to gain access to victims’ files.
Despite the minimal impact of the attack, it still raised concerns about the potential for increased pipeline hacking in the future.
DDoSecrets published 37 gigabytes of the company’s data. It says it only released the data that was necessary to expose the company’s operations and redacted potentially sensitive software data, code, and human resources materials.
Xing Team is a new ransomware operation that’s believed to originate from China. However, it’s hard to confirm if the group is based in China or not, so far its name is the only evidence that points that they are from China.
