Colonial Pipeline, which operates the largest gasoline pipeline in the country, was forced to shut down operations on Friday due to a ransomware attack.
05/13/2021 UPDATE – Thursday, citing two people familiar with the transaction, that Colonial paid the hackers nearly $5 million. Once the payment was made, in untraceable cryptocurrency, the hackers gave the pipeline operator a decrypting tool to restore the network, according to the Bloomberg report.
In a Saturday statement, Colonial Pipeline said that it “proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations, and affected some of our IT systems.”
Colonial’s pipelines are a crucial delivery system for the eastern seaboard of the United States. According to the company, their pipelines transport 2.5 million barrels per day and supply approximately 45 percent of all fuel used on the East Coast.
On Saturday, as the F.B.I., the Energy Department and the White House looked into the details, Colonial Pipeline acknowledged that its corporate computer networks had been hit by a ransomware attack, in which criminal groups hold data hostage until the victim pays a ransom.
The company said it had shut the pipeline itself, a precautionary act, apparently for fear that the hackers might have obtained information that would enable them to attack susceptible parts of the pipeline.
In a statement Saturday evening, the White House said that President Biden had been briefed on the ransomware attack and its aftermath earlier in the day and that federal officials were working to “assess the implications of this incident, avoid disruption to supply and help the company restore pipeline operations as quickly as possible.” It said it was seeking to make sure others in the fuel industry were moving to protect themselves.
I have one question.
1) Why are your PLCs (Prologic Controllers) and other pipeline control systems connected to the internet, or to networks that are?
Power Companies that I work with daily over the last fifteen years, based on FERC and NERC guidelines require that all operational systems be physically disconnected to corporate systems and the internet.
Do Pipeline systems not need these safeguards?
Another preventable cyberattack, hopefully the people in charge are fired. We as a nation cannot have people that clearly should not be in technology in charge of these types of systems.
05/13/2021 UPDATE Wow, $5 million ransome paid. You the consumer will just pay for it at the pump, the losers in charge will keep their jobs for now, until the next hack.
References:
Reference 1: rollingstone.com – cyber attack pipeline shut down
Reference 2: nytimes.com- cyber attack colonial pipeline
Reference 3: foxbusiness.com- colonial pipeline pays hackers millions
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