Colonial Pipeline System Restart

[fattboyzz]

I guess they showed us they can cut us off at will

 

[Horsehat]

That pipeline has been there for more than 50 years. Was operated long before Al Gore invented the internet. It could be operated with phones and on site operators at the pumping stations. If they had an emergency plan, the public would have never even known it was down.
Plantation pipeline operates a line just a few miles from the Colonial line and largely parallel, it was not down. The “shortage” was caused by panic buyers, plain and simple. Supply would have been ample had people not gone stupid and started filling Walmart bags with gas.
Rant over

 

[BIKER13]

That pipeline has been there for more than 50 years. Was operated long before Al Gore invented the internet. It could be operated with phones and on site operators at the pumping stations. If they had an emergency plan, the public would have never even known it was down.
Plantation pipeline operates a line just a few miles from the Colonial line and largely parallel, it was not down. The “shortage” was caused by panic buyers, plain and simple. Supply would have been ample had people not gone stupid and started filling Walmart bags with gas.
Rant over

said that saturday. and nobody ever answered what about all the gas in the Doraville tank farm.

 

[Ken Ford]

So, did they air gap it? Or is it still connected to the internet?

IDK, but my experience with that same scenario, is that they paid the ransom. It would take months to airgap a back up and restart from a blank slate.
Company I haul exclusively for had the same thing happen to them. But they are a Global company so the scale was larger. They told them to pound sand, took them months to get back going full speed.

 

[Fish Fry]

I like how the hackers were quoted as apoligizing for the "social consequences" of their actions - the media positioning them as modetn day Robin Hood.....

Sent from my LGMP260 using Tapatalk

 

[ne ga pappy]

View attachment 3260818these guys are available

I do believe that one on the right is a whale, not a seal.

 

[Ken Ford]

From what I read Colonial's accounting systems were hacked, not their pumping operations.

Colonial voluntarily took their pumping/storage computer systems off-line to stop a potentially hack.

Colonial brought in so-called experts who say all is good, so tonight Colonial is back to pumping.

Can we all say... Bull ****.

 

[sniper22]

I think that is yet to be determined.
I follow some security industry pros on Twitter and one of them said the company was using a previous version of Microsoft Exchange. Not the current version.

My speculation: If an MS Exchange mail server was used to gain entry, the hackers could have compromised the laptops of some employees who work on the SCADA control network. If the field techs have sim cards installed in the laptops, and they were working on the SCADA equipment, they would infect the SCADA equipment, compromise the air gap and connect via the sim card connection to the hackers control servers. At that point, the hackers could move from SCADA to SCADA once they get set up.
I'm just "Tom Clancy-ing" it here. I don't really know what happened.

It don't matter if you know anything about this or not, that theory is really legit sounding.

 

[Masterblaster]

The operational side of the pipeline wasn’t affected by the hack. Colonial shut down operations because the hackers affected their ability to bill for the gas they were moving through the pipeline.

 

[Masterblaster]

Sorry, I see someone beat me to it