The advantage of the internet is a disadvantage sometime’s…
The Fed’s will be involved in finding out who did this….
One of the nation’s largest pipelines, which carries refined gasoline and jet fuel from Texas up the East Coast to New York, was forced to shut down after being hit by a ransomware attack in a demonstration of the vulnerability of energy infrastructure to cyberbreaches.
The operator of the system, Colonial Pipeline, said in a statement late Friday that it had shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which it says carries 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel supplies, in an effort to contain the breach on its computer networks. Earlier Friday, there were disruptions along the pipeline, but it was not immediately clear whether that was a direct result of the attack, or the company’s moves to proactively halt it.
Colonial Pipeline indicated Saturday afternoon that its systems were hit by ransomware, in which hackers hold a victim’s data hostage until it pays a ransom, but it did not say when normal operations would resume. Still, the shutdown of such a vital pipeline, one that has been serving the East Coast since the early 1960s, highlights the vulnerability of aging infrastructure that has been connected, directly or indirectly, to the internet.
In coming weeks, the administration is expected to issue a broad-ranging executive order to bolster security of federal and private systems, after two major attacks from Russia and China in recent months caught American intelligence agencies and companies by surprise….