A pipeline stretching more than 8,000 kilometres has been put out of action by a cyberattack. New York and the rest of the East Coast risk running out of fuel. A pipeline stretching more than 8,000 kilometres has been out of action for days due to a hacker attack. New York and the rest of the East Coast risk running out of fuel.
The largest pipeline in the United States has been put out of action by a cyberattack. The Colonial Pipeline supplies fuel to roughly half of the American East Coast, including cities such as New York and Atlanta, but for three days now its more than 8,000 kilometres of pipes have been at a standstill following a cyberattack that led President Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency. The price of oil has already risen in recent hours, while suspicion is focusing on the group Darkside, a pool of cybercriminals who demand ransoms to restore the networks they attack.
On Friday 7 May, a ransomware attack — that is, malicious software that paralyses certain data and is removed only upon payment of a ransom — struck the United States' oil infrastructure. Around 8,850 kilometres of pipelines, which carry petrol and other fuels from Texas towards the east of the country, ceased operating, partly as a precautionary measure to contain the problem, paralysing a flow of around 2.5 million barrels per day. Colonial Pipeline, the private operator that manages the affected network, reported malfunctions, but it took several hours before it publicly acknowledged that it had been the victim of a hacker attack. This was probably an attempt to conceal the vulnerability of its IT system, which today manages much of the fuel supply process in an automated manner.
United States President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency — a measure that is above all precautionary and logistical in nature — to allow for certain exemptions to current regulations, for example regarding road transport and the daily working hours of hauliers, who will have to stand in for the pipelines until the crisis is resolved. Meanwhile, the price of oil has risen, and fears are growing that the shutdown could be prolonged, with all the serious consequences that would entail. The American Automobile Association has pointed out that if the situation were to last several days, a shortage of petrol stocks would occur, while states such as Alabama and cities such as Baltimore would find it harder to connect to other pipelines, compared for instance to the Midwest area.
Authorities, together with specialist cybersecurity firms, are investigating those responsible for the hacker attack on the pipeline. The ransomware is believed to be the work of Darkside, a new outfit made up of cybercriminals who specialise in ransomware extortion. On their dark web site they claim to have already earned millions of dollars in recent months through extortion, while individuals and companies that have not paid the ransoms now find their personal data published in a dedicated section of the site.
What has unfolded over these past hours has been described as one of the largest cyberattacks in United States history, given that it has effectively paralysed the oil infrastructure of half the country. But in reality it is only the latest episode in an escalation of attacks that — carried out by criminal groups for extortion purposes or by foreign powers in the form of diplomatic warfare — are proving to be a new and pervasive weapon of destruction. In December 2020, the US was struck by the Solarwinds attack, responsibility for which was attributed to Russian intelligence. In that case, the data of hundreds of government agencies and private companies was breached. Last March, it was the turn of Microsoft Exchange server, one of the most widely used software platforms in the world, hacked by Chinese cybercriminal groups in an attack that likely compromised the data of more than 100,000 people around the world.
In less than six months, the United States, or companies operating within it, have thus suffered three major cyberattacks, and the news is that they were unable to prevent them. According to analysts, the problem lies with the Trump administration, which in recent years did far too little in the field of cybersecurity, with the belated appointment of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), the dismissal of its director Christopher Krebs for refusing to lend credence to the Trumpian conspiracy of electoral fraud last November, and, more broadly, for the former president's stubborn insistence on downplaying America's cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The current occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, was already prepared to act on the issue, and the attack of recent hours on the oil infrastructure will only accelerate the process. On the horizon is the approval of a national road map that will set new benchmarks on cybersecurity, to ensure that no further Colonial Pipeline-type incidents occur.
