Colonial Pipeline says it has restarted operations, after being shut down for five days due to DarkSide's ransomware attack
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 NewsKevin Collier
Context & Ripple Effects
Colonial Pipeline had first halted service after the ransomware incident, then said it aimed to substantially restore service by the end of the week. The restart marks the move from a five-day operational stoppage toward recovery for a conduit that related coverage says carries 45% of fuel consumed on the U.S. East Coast.
The attack was attributed to DarkSide, which related reporting said stole and encrypted roughly 100GB of data before demanding a ransom. The reported restart therefore closes the immediate outage phase but leaves the attack’s recovery and extortion implications in view.
First-order effects
Colonial Pipeline can begin restoring service after the shutdown, reducing the immediate disruption to the East Coast fuel route described in earlier coverage.
DarkSide’s attack has forced Colonial to treat cyber recovery as an operational prerequisite, not solely an IT response.
Second-order effects
The incident turns Colonial’s reported ransom payment into a concrete example of how a cyber extortion event can interrupt a physical-service operator until operations are restored.
Operators of similarly consequential infrastructure face a clearer continuity benchmark: a ransomware response must account for both stolen data and a potential service halt.
Third-order effects
If attacks that combine data theft, encryption, and ransom demands continue to disrupt essential operators, cyber resilience will increasingly be assessed as part of infrastructure reliability rather than as a separate technology function.
The trend: Ransomware is becoming an operational-infrastructure risk when attackers can turn a corporate network compromise into a real-world service interruption.
Audit of Colonial Pipeline three years ago found “atrocious” info management. “I mean an eighth-grader could have hacked into that system,” the author told @AP https://apnews.com/...
“Some people hear a rumor or a news story about individual instances of fuel stations running out, they rush to buy extra fuel, perhaps more than they need, and the aggregate result is that this panic buying ends up creating the very shortage which people fear.” https://twitter.c…
“He cited, for example, Colonial's inability to locate a particular maintenance document. 'You're supposed to be able to find it within 15 minutes. It took them three weeks.'” Great scoop here. What's scary is you'd find this same situation at most infrastructure companies. https…
“I mean an eighth-grader could have hacked into that system.” The author of a 2018 audit of Colonial Pipeline's networks described the company's information management practices as “atrocious.” https://apnews.com/...
Colonial Pipeline announced they have restarted operations. This is a delicate time in terms of OT-IT incident response, and there's obviously a lot on the line. Good luck to the operators and support teams over the coming hours and days. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
There are now State of Emergencies declared in NC, VA, GA, & FL. We need a National Clean Car Plan now. Fuel shortages, pipeline hacks, transportation-related air pollution, & highway development displacing Black & Brown communities are national security issues. #ClimateAction ht…
Source: “We found glaring deficiencies and big problems,” said Robert F. Smallwood, whose consulting firm delivered an 89-page report in January 2018 after a six-month audit. “I mean an eighth-grader could have hacked into that system.” https://apnews.com/...
Classic example of a poorly designed complex system: Colonial Pipeline's FINANCIAL systems were compromised; they shut down their OPERATIONAL system for several days. I appreciate proceeding with an abundance of caution but...separation of concerns anyone? https://www.colpipe.com…
So quit panicking and hoarding gas. It's like hoarding toilet paper only it smells worse. Colonial announces pipeline restart, says normal service will take ‘several days’ https://www.nbcnews.com/...
More than 17% of the stations in Georgia and Virginia were dry Wednesday. Major metropolitan areas have been hit hardest by the shortages, with more than 70% of the stations out of gas in Charlotte, Raleigh & Greenville, as well as roughly 60% of those in Norfolk and Atlanta http…
Colonial Pipeline has restarted pipeline “today at approximately 5 pm ET... it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal. Some markets... may experience... intermittent service interruptions during the start-up” https://t.co/wFko0SHoJ5
Unreal how much worse things have gotten since yesterday - @GasBuddy now says 42% (!) of gas stations in Virginia have run out, with Maryland and DC just under 10 percent. In North Carolina it is 65%!!! https://www.gasbuddy.com/...
@washingtonpost @Ecksearoh Just to be clear, this is fine not paying ransom. Even paying a ransom still requires basically rebuilding the network anyway.
I don't want to lose the focus on the bigger story, but I have so many questions about the NDAs here. “Smallwood read portions of his [audit] report to the AP but would not share it because he said some of the content is confidential. He said he was paid about $50,000 for it.” ht…