One of the largest pipelines in the United States has shut down operations after a cyberattack.
In a statement updated midday Saturday, the Colonial Pipeline Company said it had determined the incident involved ransomware — a type of cyberattack where malicious actors block access to data until a ransom is paid.
In response, the company took certain systems offline Friday to contain the threat, halting pipeline operations.
The New York Times reported on an earlier version of the statement that said the company had shut down 5,500 miles of pipeline, which, according to the company, carries 45% of the East Coast’s fuel supplies.
The company describes its pipeline as the “largest refined products pipeline in the United States,” transporting more than 100 million gallons of fuel daily from Texas to New York.
The statement said Colonial Pipeline has engaged a third-party cybersecurity firm and has also contacted law enforcement.
“At this time, our primary focus is the safe and efficient restoration of our service and our efforts to return to normal operation,” the statement said. “This process is already underway, and we are working diligently to address this matter and to minimize disruption to our customers and those who rely on Colonial Pipeline.”
It’s not clear who’s responsible for the attack.
The New York Times reported that because energy use is down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the attack is not likely to cause any immediate disruptions.
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Is cyber security just not seen as a problem by our government? It is insane that this keeps happening!
And of course our fearless President Biden, rather than stating “We will hunt these people down and destroy them” just whines “These terrorist attacks are here to stay” ??? Translation is that diminishing oil production helps the Democrats and their Iranian and Russian friends who are financing the faux environMENTALists with our own money, earned in the rise of oil prices that benefit both.
IT seems over the past 10 years, we’ve spent SO MUCH MONEY ‘Supposedly’ improving our cyber security’, but seem MORE VULNERABLE NOW< than we did before.
ALSO I keep wondering, HOW MANY MORE TIMES MUST We get 'Hacked by agents working for FOREIGN GOVTS, before we see this threat, as a DECLARATION OF war against our nation!?!?!?
I heard on Fox News that a Russian Group hacked the pipeline computers, so one can bet that Putin was involved. What are the so called cyber security experts in the United States doing, as this hacking is going on and on in our Country?
Trolling porn sites most likely.
Also, i’ve seen a # of news articles (usually local) about his or that school board getting hacked, or this or that local hospital getting ransomwared.. BUT LITTLE TO NOTHING about it from the national news.. ONE wonders, why that is!?
Interesting that this is happening during the administration who has sworn their contempt for and goal of destroying our fossil fuel programs.
IT does seem rather coincidental.. Doesn’t it.
Seems that a small medium size company like mine has to follow all these security laws by state, the federal government, and the international community causing us great economic pain just to have a foot print of doing business via the internet. Yet these huge conglomerates can go about not securing their systems. Something not right in this at all.
This is an infrastructure fix by requiring all companies to be locked down to cyber attacks.
This has become big business for sure.
You’d think with all the news we keep hearing about how THIS OR THAT company just got hacked, SOMEONE IN GOVT would wise the hell up and say “GEE MAYBE WE SHOULDN’T keep putting MORE and more, of our nations critical information, ON COMPUTERS TIED to the bloody internet..
Put them all on CLOSED Systems, so they can’t get hacked!
Why was the pipeline not on a private network? Why was it connected to the internet?
Why does anybody continue to use Windows instead of Linux for critical applications?
Whenever I hear of somebody’s database being downloaded and millions of customers’ data being accessed, I wonder “Why was that not encrypted?”
Boneheaded idiots who don’t think things through.
IT WAS HACKED BY A O C and her greenies.
You can take that to the bank.
Just like the booster shot on vaccines, you saw this coming too.