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A cyberattack has shut down America's largest fuel pipeline, and this has brought up concerns about everything, from how vulnerable American infrastructure is, to how much this could impact fuel prices. As far as those are concerned, the national average for one gallon of gasoline was $2.97 on Monday. That's 60 percent higher than it was at this time last year when Americans weren't driving as much during COVID related shutdowns.
The Colonial Pipeline Company transports about 45 percent of all the fuel consumed on the U.S. East Coast. It found out Friday it had been hit by a cybersecurity attack. Colonial says the computer virus involves something called ransomware.
What this does is encrypt or lock up important information until a person or organization pays a ransom to get it back again. This is a growing threat to computer systems and the security company McAfee says it's nearly impossible to get files back without paying the ransom and let the attacker backs off.
So, who is the attacker?
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation says it's a criminal group that originated in Russia. We don't know if Colonial plans to pay the ransom.
The federal government says because it's a private company, it's up to Colonial to decide.
We can tell you that in the past year, ransomware victims have paid more than $350 million to get their files back. The U.S. government is telling infrastructure providers to do all they can to protect themselves from cyberattacks.
Colonial says it was able to shut down its operations before the virus can impact its physical equipment systems, the ones that actually operate the oil pipelines. It says its smaller systems are now up and running again, but its four main lines are still shut down and it may take until the end of the week until it's fully operational.
The government says there's not a shortage of gasoline at the moment, and an oil expert says a disruption of a couple of days isn't typical a big deal. However, if Colonial's pipe stay closed through this week or longer, the problem this creates and the price rises it causes could be much greater.
