Pipeline Shut Down Due to Ransomware Attack

The US Government had its hand forced last week as one of the major pipelines in the nation, the Colonial Pipeline, was the victim of the largest US oil company infrastructure cyber-attack ever. The pipeline, which carries “45% of the East Coast’s supply of diesel, petrol and jet fuel,” according to the BBC, is shut down indefinitely, causing gasoline prices to spike.

“We have since determined that this incident involves ransomware,” said Colonial Pipeline in a statement on Saturday, May 8. Thankfully, the attack only affected systems on the business side, not the operations side.

“In response, we proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations, and affected some of our IT systems,” Colonial Pipeline said.

Reuters reported Sunday that the hacker group is known as DarkSide, “known for deploying ransomware and extorting victims while avoiding targets in post-Soviet states,” may have been the perpetrators.

On Sunday, Colonial Pipeline released a second statement, noting that, “While our mainlines (Lines 1, 2, 3 and 4) remain offline, some smaller lateral lines between terminals and delivery points are now operational.”