Cyberattack forces major US fuel pipeline to shut down

A cyberattack forced the temporary shutdown of one of the United States' largest pipelines on Friday, highlighting already-heightened concerns about the nation's critical infrastructure vulnerabilities.

According to its website, Colonial Pipeline, which transports more than 100 million gallons of gasoline and other fuel daily from Houston to New York Harbor, discovered the cyberattack on Friday and halted operations.

"In response, we took certain systems offline proactively to contain the threat, which temporarily halted all pipeline operations and affected some of our IT systems," the company said in a statement.

Colonial stated that it hired a third-party cybersecurity firm to investigate the "nature and scope of this incident," and that it also contacted law enforcement and other federal agencies. CNN has requested comment from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Following recent incidents, there is growing concern about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in America's critical infrastructure, and the Biden administration last month launched an effort to beef up cybersecurity in the nation's power grid, calling on industry leaders to install technologies that could thwart attacks on the electricity supply.

Following two alarming incidents — the SolarWinds intrusion campaign by alleged Russian hackers, which compromised nine US agencies and dozens of private organizations, and the Chinese-linked hack of Microsoft Exchange server vulnerabilities, which exposed tens of thousands of systems worldwide — cybersecurity has been a major focus as well as a high-profile, but ultimately unsuccessful, cyberattack on a water treatment plant in Florida earlier this year.

Colonial stated on Friday that they are "taking steps to understand and resolve this issue."

"Our primary focus at this time is the safe and efficient restoration of our service, as well as our efforts to resume normal operations. This process is already in motion, and we are working hard to address this issue and minimize disruption to our customers and those who rely on Colonial Pipeline "According to the company.

Colonial, which was founded in 1962, claims to transport approximately 45 percent of all fuel consumed on the East Coast. The pipeline system, which spans more than 5,500 miles, is divided into two main lines: one for gasoline and another for other fuels such as diesel and jet fuel.

When Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast in 2017, the company was forced to shut down its pipeline. In September 2016, the pipeline was shut down for 11 days due to an underground leak, and in November 2016, a deadly fire broke out along a section of the pipeline in Alabama.

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