Ransomware is believed to have caused the outage
Colonial Pipeline, which operates the largest gasoline pipeline in the country, was forced to shut down operations on Friday due to a ransomware attack.
In a Saturday statement, Colonial Pipeline said that it “proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations, and affected some of our IT systems.”
Colonial’s pipelines are a crucial delivery system for the eastern seaboard of the United States. According to the company, their pipelines transport 2.5 million barrels per day and supply approximately 45 percent of all fuel used on the East Coast.
Allan Liska, senior threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, told Bloomberg that the attackers appear to have used a ransomware group called DarkSide to carry out the attack. DarkSide first emerged in August of 2020. DarkSide has used its ransomware on many companies, including CompuCom (an Office Depot subsidiary) as well as a Canadian division of rental car company Enterprise.