By ELLEN NAKASHIMA | The Washington Post | Published: May 13, 2021 WASHINGTON President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday aimed at shoring up the federal government s digital defenses as his administration grapples with cybersecurity crises, including a ransomware strike on a major fuel pipeline that has caused gas shortages. Less than four months into his tenure, Biden has had to respond to a Russian cyber espionage operation that affected nine federal agencies and about 100 American companies, as well as a Chinese cyber hacking campaign that compromised tens of thousands of small and midsize firms that used Microsoft Exchange email servers. On Saturday, Colonial Pipeline acknowledged that it had fallen victim to a ransomware attack that led it to shut down its entire pipeline the biggest known cyberattack on the U.S. energy sector. The attack has led to long lines at the pump in some parts of the southeastern United States.
POLITICO
Get the Morning Energy newsletter
Email
Sign Up
By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or updates from POLITICO and you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Presented by Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association (FCHEA)
With help from Annie Snider.
Editor’s Note: Morning Energy is a free version of POLITICO Pro Energy s morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
Cyberspace Is Neither Just an Intelligence Contest, nor a Domain of Military Conflict; SolarWinds Shows Us Why It’s Both
The U.S. Capitol Building. (Phil Horton, https://flic.kr/p/o3pr5t; CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
Operations in cyberspace at least those perpetrated by nation-state actors and their proxies reflect the geopolitical calculations of the actors who carry them out. Strategic interactions between rivals in cyberspace have been argued by some, like Joshua Rovner or Jon Lindsay, to reflect an intelligence contest. Others, like Jason Healey and Robert Jervis, have suggested that cyberspace is largely a domain of warfare or conflict. The contours of this debate as applied to the SolarWinds campaign have been outlined recently Melissa Griffith shows how cyberspace is sometimes an intelligence contest, and other times a domain of conflict, depending on the strategic approaches and priorities of particular actors at a given moment in time.
North Carolina Begins Panic Buying Gas Amid Pipeline Hack
Some gas stations have run out of fuel as the major fuel supplier, Colonial Pipeline, remains temporarily out of operation due to a cyberattack over the weekend. Officials have urged residents not to hoard fuel.
May 12, 2021 • (TNS) Gas panic has taken hold in parts of North Carolina, with long lines at gas stations as motorists are jittery over news a major pipeline is temporarily shut down.
The panic buying was clear across the state on Tuesday, from the mountains of Asheville to the beaches of the Outer Banks and many places in-between. Bags on pumps were a common sight in the Triangle as some gas stations ran out of fuel or had only diesel left to offer.
Putting The Spotlight on DarkSide
Incident responders share insight on the DarkSide ransomware group connected to the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack.
Details continue to emerge about the ransomware attack that hit Colonial Pipeline late last week, forcing the major US pipeline operator to take some systems offline and temporarily halt pipeline operations. The FBI has linked ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group DarkSide to the attack.
Related Content:
Colonial Pipeline runs a system spanning 5,500 miles between Houston, Texas, and northern New Jersey, delivering about 45% of the fuel for the East Coast, the company says. In an update published May 12, officials reported they had initiated the restart of pipeline operations and note it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal.