US pipeline canceled by hostile cyberattack

When you think of energy, especially hydrocarbon energy as bad, you don’t prioritize a stockpile or reserve of it. You don’t want to stockpile immoral substances which it turns out are absolutely vital.

Cyber attack shuts down U.S. fuel pipeline ‘jugular,’ Biden briefed

Top U.S. fuel pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline shut its entire network, the source of nearly half of the U.S. East Coast’s fuel supply, after a cyber attack on Friday that involved ransomware.

The incident is one of the most disruptive digital ransom operations ever reported and has drawn attention to how vulnerable U.S. energy infrastructure is to hackers. A prolonged shutdown of the line would cause prices to spike at gasoline pumps ahead of peak summer driving season, a potential blow to U.S. consumers and the economy.

“This is as close as you can get to the jugular of infrastructure in the United States,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, research professor and managing director of the Climate Policy Lab. “It’s not a major pipeline. It’s the pipeline.”

Reuters

Colonial Hackers Stole Data Thursday Ahead of Shutdown

The hackers who caused Colonial Pipeline to shut down the biggest U.S. gasoline pipeline on Friday began their blitz against the company a day earlier, stealing a large amount of data before locking computers with ransomware and demanding payment, according to people familiar with the matter.

It’s not clear how much money the attackers demanded or whether Colonial has paid. Ransomware demands can range from several hundred dollars to millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. Many companies pay, often facilitated by their insurers

Bloomberg

During WW2 the idea was to deprive the enemy of hydrocarbons.

The Allied oil campaign of World War II[6]:11 pitted the RAF and the USAAF against facilities supplying Nazi Germany with petroleum, oil, and lubrication (POL) products. It formed part of the immense Allied strategic bombing effort during the war. The targets in Germany and in Axis Europe[7] included refineries, synthetic fuel factories, storage depots and other POL-infrastructure.

Before the war, Britain had identified Germany’s reliance on oil and oil products for its war machine, and the strategic bombing started with RAF attacks on Germany in 1940. After the US entered the war (December 1941), it carried out daytime “precision bombing” attacks – such as Operation Tidal Wave against refineries in Romania in 1943.[8] The last major strategic raid of the European theater of the war targeted a refinery in Norway in April 1945. During the war the effort expended against POL targets varied, with relative priority sometimes given to other objectives such as to defeating the German V-weapon attacks or to preparations for the invasion of western Europe in 1944.

The strategic importance of oil resources in World War II also showed in campaigns such as:

1. the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran (August–September 1941) to secure access to Persian oil
2. Japan’s strategic offensive against the Dutch East Indies (1941–1942) to re-access embargoed oil- and rubber-resources
3. the Wehrmacht’s drive towards Baku and the oilfields of the Caucasus (Case Blue and Operation Edelweiss) in the summer of 1942
4. the Soviet occupation of Romania in 1944, which deprived the Axis of the important Ploesti oil-fields