Colonial Announces Pipeline Restart After Being Shut Down For Five Days Due To Cyberattack (nbcnews.com) 46
Colonial Pipeline, operator of the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, said Wednesday it is restarting operations after being shut down for five days due to a cyberattack. NBC News reports: The company shut down its entire operation Friday after its financial computer networks were infected by a Russia-tied hacker gang known as DarkSide, fearing that the hackers could spread to its industrial operations as well. The shutdown led to widespread gasoline shortages and caused temporary price spikes. "Colonial Pipeline initiated the restart of pipeline operations today at approximately 5 p.m. ET," the company said in a statement on its website. "Following this restart, it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal."
Pretty fragile system (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of how well they can secure this pipeline or not going forward, it seems like having just one companies pipeline go down affect pretty much the entire supply of gasoline across the eastern coast is an incredibly fragile weak point for a country to have.
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Quoting the President is a Troll move? Or the current President is a Troll? Shills paid to downvote any gaffs? Who knows...
"At the White House, President Biden told reporters Monday the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence the Russian government was involved with the Colonial attack, but Mr. Biden said there was evidence the ransomware was in Russia. "They have some responsibility to deal with this," the president said after delivering remarks on the economy."
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The Russians did it! The Russians did it! The Russians did it! There is no evidence of it but we know they did it. p. If I had a dollar for every time a democrat screamed the Russians did it.
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The Russians did it! The Russians did it! The Russians did it! There is no evidence of it but we know they did it. p. If I had a dollar for every time a democrat screamed the Russians did it.
Why you want dollars Boris? You'll take your rubles, and you'll like them.
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You're probably right on that one. Considering how much debt the US has vs. Russia, and how fast inflation is occurring in the US right now, you might actually be better off to take payment in rubles than USD.
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You're probably right on that one. Considering how much debt the US has vs. Russia, and how fast inflation is occurring in the US right now, you might actually be better off to take payment in rubles than USD.
I like all the Russians I have met As in all things, people are great, not always their governments.
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Where were you with those little nuggets of wisdom during the Keystone XL pipeline cancellation, Joe?
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The Keystone XL pipeline is a crude oil pipeline. Nothing to do with gasoline.
Someone needs a lesson in oil refinery...
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Still, some things they screw with, others they wash their hands and say "Not my problem."
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The Keystone XL pipeline is a crude oil pipeline. Nothing to do with gasoline.
Hush! this is all a plot to get Patent lover to try to put that great Canadian sludge oil in his vehicle.
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Plenty of those major points of failure around.
I'm curious if they paid off the ransomware thugs like a bunch of wusses.
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I think you may have gotten a tear in your tinfoil hat. It may be time to think about a replacement.
Re:Pretty fragile system (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of how well they can secure this pipeline or not going forward, it seems like having just one companies pipeline go down affect pretty much the entire supply of gasoline across the eastern coast is an incredibly fragile weak point for a country to have.
A large part of the problem was gas hoarding. It was the whole toilet paper thing all over again. As soon as the news broke people were lining up at gas stations with their gas cans to stock up.
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A large part of the problem was gas hoarding.
Yes, the fat fucks in their fat SUVs [9cache.com] are definitely a problem.
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A large part of the problem was gas hoarding.
Yes, the fat fucks in their fat SUVs [9cache.com] are definitely a problem.
There's a golden lining though. We've learned now that the cure for the employee drought in reopening is to tell everyone there is a shortage of jobs.
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This. I even saw people on the news dispensing gasoline into plastic bags to hoard even more. It's only been down 5 days and normally gas stations have a few days worth (at normal sales volume) in their tanks on-site. People who fill up once a week probably haven't actually needed to get gas yet (other than the fear that some idiot would dispense the last 5 gallons into a hefty bag if they don't get it now).
Had it not been a major headline followed by a panic, I wonder if consumers would have even noticed t
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Regardless of how well they can secure this pipeline or not going forward, it seems like having just one companies pipeline go down affect pretty much the entire supply of gasoline across the eastern coast is an incredibly fragile weak point for a country to have.
Not disputing your single point of failure argument, but the hack was on the company's financial systems. The company chose to shutdown the pipeline control systems as a precaution -- though I'm pretty sure the petroleum companies are happy about resulting short-term price spike ...
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[T]the hack was on the company's financial systems.
Boss Bubba thinking "If we can't take in money then why the heck are we open?"
The company chose to shutdown the pipeline control systems as a precaution -- though I'm pretty sure the petroleum companies are happy about resulting short-term price spike ...
How far is Colonial Pipeline from the old Enron offices?
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Regardless of how well they can secure this pipeline or not going forward, it seems like having just one companies pipeline go down affect pretty much the entire supply of gasoline across the eastern coast is an incredibly fragile weak point for a country to have.
You can look to Europe as to how countries cope with this problem. E.g. Austria who has enough strategic reserves to get through a winter, a necessity that dates back a few decades to when the russians would constantly cut off Europe's gas supply and blame the Ukraine.
Pipelines are expensive.
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At this stage, it's negligence, for operations this big, switch over to a clean offline system should go unnoticed, except for the alarm that it happened
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Not really. Plenty of local stockpile, and the pipeline was never directly impacted. It has to be able to accommodate hurricanes so it is a pretty hardened distribution network.
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I guess it's a good thing then that the pipeline was secure the whole time and the supply of gasoline across the east coats was never reduced.
Now if only there was something we could do about the slack-jawed yokels and their panic buying.
Re:Pretty fragile system (Score:5, Insightful)
The pipeline is secure. None of the control systems were infected - the corporate network was infected, but the control network was not. However, for safety reasons, they shut down the control network just in case. I mean, it makes sense - even if you have a segregated network and air gaps or data diodes and such, it's much too easy to accidentally bridge the gap by accident - all it would take is a USB, a laptop, etc. So shutting down the pipeline safely, and shutting down the network while it's still clean is the right thing to do to prevent it from getting potentially infected (and since it's safety critical - human safety, environmental safety, etc), knowing it stays clean means a faster restart.
As for being critical - well, realize the pipeline isn't pumping oil 24/7. It carries a variety of products - one day it carries 87 unleaded, the next day, it's carrying 90, and the day after 92. Day after that it's carrying diesel.
It's not specific, either - the products are pumped into and out of gigantic tanks that basically have enough product for a couple of weeks or more. Notice I never said which oil company - it's because well, 87 octane is 87 octane unleaded. The gas companies take that and feed it into their plants that add their "special sauce" and that goes out to the gas stations. Meanwhile, the tanks are generic - Shell may offload 87 octane into the pipeline and that specific hydrocarbon gets put into an Esso station in the end - the product the pipeline carries are completely fungible.
The pipeline being shut down had no effect on either end - the shortage was just caused by people being idiots and gas stations not jacking up the price of gas to discourage panic buying. Just like how there was a run on toilet paper, or a run on meat, or a run on other product people bought by the ton.
Considering I only buy TP when it was cheap, means I ended up with a rather large stockpile of them collected over 10 years - a stockpile I estimate would've lasted me an entire year if I didn't buy another package. I think the lowest I ever got to was maybe 10 months worth of TP before it started showing up on shelves again since everyone filled their house with TP. I waited another month and it went on sale, so I bought a pack. Bought another pack the week after that (still on sale) and I was full again. But it's gone on sale so often now I picked up another pack.
Likewise, I fill my car when it gets to around 3/4 tank. Because of this craziness, I didn't bother filling my car - that 3/4 tank will last a long time for me, so the craziness will have long settled down and I don't have to fill my car with expensive gas.
And no, I'm no prepper. I did pick up a bit more food in the event I got COVID or was potentially exposed and had to self-isolate, but that's mostly gone back to normal now. In case of complete collapse of society, I have no chance. But even global pandemic shutting everything down, not a big deal.
Re:Pretty fragile system (Score:5, Insightful)
None of the control systems were infected - the corporate network was infected, but the control network was not. However, for safety reasons, they shut down the control network just in case.
In practice it seems to have worked out to the same thing. They had to shut down the pipeline. You can say it's "just" the corporate network, nothing critical, but the effect was the same either way. If a hack of the corporate network leads to shutting down the pipeline, then the pipeline is only as secure as the corporate network.
Attackers will always go after the weakest link in the chain. They just care about results. If an easy hack can shut down a major piece of infrastructure for five days, then that piece of infrastructure is very fragile. And if your job is to defend that infrastructure, you need to defend against all attacks, direct or indirect. If attackers bring it down, that means you failed, whatever means they used to do it.
Re:Couldn't get paid (Score:1)
I'll just reshare this here:
https://twitter.com/RobletoFir... [twitter.com]
This has been posted on another /. story about this, and the gist is:
Their billing system was down, they couldn't invoice for transferred product, so they shut down the whole thing.
Is it true? Well, its on twitter, so it must be, right?
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Regardless of how well they can secure this pipeline or not going forward, it seems like having just one companies pipeline go down affect pretty much the entire supply of gasoline across the eastern coast is an incredibly fragile weak point for a country to have.
I know, right? Good thing our new rational overlords are busy building new pipelines! :)
Did they pay the Ransom money? (Score:2)
Re:Welcome to Biden's America (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew that things were going to be bad under Biden but I did not have "gas lines in the first four months" on my Bingo card
Huh, so a private company which couldn't be bothered to secure its own IT is the fault of government. Got it.
Huh, so the guy who inherited thousands of people dying each day from the previous guy because they couldn't be bothered to help the U.S., shouldn't get any credit for having that number down to a few hundred as well as having 200 million people vaccinated in a little over three months. Got it.
Huh, so the 48 year old I-40 bridge which has been shut down due to a massive crack in a structural beam, maintained by the states of Tennessee and Arkansas, is the fault of the federal government. Got it.
Huh, so the one month jump in prices due to a worldwide pandemic causing shortages across the board is the fault of the federal government. Got it.
Funny how you never spoke up about the over half million dead the con artist left behind, or the worst one day drop in stock market history, or the millions of jobs lost in his administration, or the overall crime and corruption in the previous administration. Wonder why that is.
Moron detected (Score:2)
If you're too stupid to know the difference between private infrastructure the government does not maintain and government infrastructure you should be culled like everyone else with an IQ under 100. Your kind are subhuman, utterly despicable because you wallow in ignorance, and have nothing to offer humanity.
Worse, you're inexcusably ignorant of technology which in the modern era obliterates any worth you might have had to civilization.
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You lost, get over it.
Best part is, you will never, EVER win again. I'll make sure of that.
Thank you, President Biden (Score:2)
Now that the gas is flowing, those who were blaming President Biden for the shutdown [vice.com] can now thank him for restoring service.
Re:Thank you, President Biden (Score:4, Insightful)
those who were blaming President Biden
Nah. We were planning on blaming Windows.
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Thank you... (Score:3)
..for using "gasoline", instead of "gas".