Have you noticed that gas prices have skyrocketed in your area?
Well, on May 7, 2021, the Colonial Pipeline, which carries almost half of the East Coast's fuel supply from Texas to New Jersey, shut down operations in response to a ransomware attack. Colonial paid a $4.4 million ransom not long after discovering the attack, and the pipeline was reopened within a week. While there was enough stored fuel to weather the outage, panic buying caused gasoline shortages on the East Coast and pushed the national average price of gasoline over $3.00 per gallon for the first time since 2014.[1]
