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Even if the entire service is restored, it will take about two weeks for the gasoline stored in Houston to reach the East Coast gas stations.
America’s largest gas station is returning to service as it recovered from a cyber attack on Friday night to raise bomb prices and drown fuel supplies in the eastern U.S.
The Colonial Pipeline – a critical source of gasoline and diesel for the New York area and the rest of the East Coast – would begin around 5 p.m., Eastern Time, according to a company note.
Operator Alpharetta (Georgia) said over the weekend that it had been forced to shut down systems on May 7 in response to a ransomware attack. Even if the entire service is restored, it will take about two weeks for the gasoline stored in Houston to reach the East Coast gas stations.
Gas stations from Florida to Virginia are dry. In some parts of the southern U.S., three of the four gas stations ran out of fuel as of Wednesday, while in Washington, DC, cars were waiting in line for blocks to fill.
U.S. pump prices have exceeded $ 3 a gallon in the first six years. Every day the colonial usually sends about 2.5 million barrels (105 million liters), a figure that exceeds the total German oil consumption.
The collapse of the Colonial Pipeline raised the price of diesel and caused fuel shortages in some areas File: Rogelio V. Solis / AP Photo]Supply disruptions underscore how weak the American fuel supply system has become in recent years as a result of hacker attacks on energy infrastructure.
Colonial ransomware was just the latest example of critical infrastructure. Hackers are increasingly trying to access key services such as power grids and hospitals.
The increased threats the White House had to respond to last month with a plan to increase the safety of public services and their suppliers. Pipelines are a specific concern because of the major role they play in the U.S. economy.
The attack on the colonials came at a time when the nation’s energy industry is preparing for summer travel and bouncing fuel demand from pandemic-related blockades.
He recalled a 2018 cyberattack that threw out a third-party communications system used by some U.S. natural gas pipeline operators that did not stop actual gas flows, but delayed electricity billing and made it difficult for retailers to predict supply. .
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has blamed the ransomware created by a group called DarkSide. There was some evidence that DarkSide was linked to Russia or other places in Eastern Europe. President Joe Biden said Russia has “some responsibility” to deal with the attack, but stopped blaming the Kremlin, saying there were “evidence” that the hackers or the software they used were “in Russia.”
It’s not the first time they’ve been forced to close Colonial. In 2016, an explosion kept the system offline for days, raising gasoline prices and forcing the New York port market to depend on fuel imports from abroad.
Colonial has the capacity to ship about 2.5 million barrels a day from Houston to North Carolina and another 900,000 barrels a day to New York.
Ransomware cases allow networks where hackers encrypt data and leave machines locked to malicious software, until victims pay an extortion fee, which can range from hundreds of dollars to millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.
Utility information technology networks, which use email and other common functions, and operating technology networks, which control the actual operation of electricity or natural gas supply, are usually kept separate, which is why Colonial decided to close both temporarily. so unusual.
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