Colonial Pipeline, which supplies fuel to the east coast of the U.S., says it has temporarily halted all pipeline operations after the piracy.
A major pipe operator in the United States has been forced to shut down the entire network after a cyberattack, the company said.
Colonial Pipeline said in a statement on Friday afternoon he was the victim of “a cybersecurity attack.”
“In response, we proactively took certain offline systems to contain the threat, which has temporarily stopped all pipeline operations and affected some of our IT systems,” he said.
The Colonial network supplies fuel from U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast to the eastern and southern populations of the United States.
The company transports 2.5 million barrels a day of gasoline, diesel, aircraft fuel and other refined products through 8,850 km (5,500 miles) of pipelines.
Colonial Pipeline says it carries 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel supply.
“The fact that this attack compromised systems that control pipeline infrastructure indicates that the attack was extremely sophisticated or that the systems were not well secured,” said Mike Chapple, a professor at Mendoza University Business College. of Notre Dame and former computer scientist with the U.S. National Security Agency.
“This closure of the pipeline sends the message that the basics of our national infrastructure remain vulnerable to cyberattack,” Chapple told Reuters news agency.
In its statement, the company said it had hired a private security company to investigate the hacking and contacted U.S. law enforcement and federal authorities.
“At the moment, our main goal is the safe and efficient restoration of our service and our efforts to return to normal operation. This process is already underway, “he said.
The United States has been shaken in recent months by news of two major cybersecurity violations.
He SolarWinds massive piracy committed thousands of U.S. governments and private sector computer networks and was officially blamed on Russia; while another to Hack Specific Microsoft Email Servers |.
The latter is believed to have affected at least 30,000 US organizations, including local governments, and was attributed to an aggressive Chinese cyberespionage campaign.
Both violations appeared to be aimed at stealing emails and data, but they also created “backdoors” that could allow attacks on physical infrastructure, The New York Times reported.
