By MARISA IATI | The Washington Post | Published: May 16, 2021
A cyberattack that shut down a major U.S. pipeline May 7 has induced fuel shortages across much of the Southeast and highlighted cybersecurity weaknesses in the nation's energy infrastructure.
Colonial Pipeline, which supplies the East Coast with 45 percent of its fuel, paused its service after a hacker group known as DarkSide broke into its servers and demanded money to restore access.
What happened to the gas supply?
The Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline, which carries fuel from Houston through the Southeast and up the East Coast to New Jersey, restarted some of its service Monday amid fears of price spikes and fuel shortages. A White House task force created to respond to the crisis and the Transportation Department temporarily relaxed fuel transport rules to make it easier to distribute gasoline. Governors in North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Florida also took steps to ease transport rules as they declared states of emergency.