Cyberattack on US pipeline and its impact on oil prices

Colonial Pipeline Company that transports about 45 per cent of all petrol and diesel to the east coast of the United States was forced to shut down operations due to a recent cyberattack.

• A cyberattackis an offensive which targets computer information systems, infrastructures, computer networks, or personal computer devices.
• An attacker attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted areas of the system without authorization, potentially with malicious intent.
• In 1979, a 16-year-old Kevin Mitnick hacked into The Ark, the computer at the Digital Equipment Corporation, which was used for developing operating systems.
• There were 53,117 cases of cyber attacksin the country in 2017. This had risen to 208,456 in 2018 and 394,499 in 2019.
  • On average, nearly 3,137 cyber security-related issues were reported daily during 2020.
  • India ranks 3rd in terms of the highest number of internet users in the world after USA and China, the number has grown 6-fold between 2012-2017.
  • India was ranked among the top five countries to be affected by cybercrime

The Cyberattack on oil pipeline

• It was a ransomware attack on a key US pipeline network.
• This has led to a disruption in fuel suppliesin the eastern part of the United States.
• It caused the US federal government to declare a regional emergency to allow transportation of fuels through tanker trucks to tide over the impact of shortages.
• According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, acriminal gang called Darkside was responsible the cyberattack.
• Oil prices rose in response to the attack on Colonial Pipeline.

What could be done to protect oil pipelines in future?

• Zero-trust security framework: The zero-trust approach means anything and everything is suspected whenever any activity is done on the network, and every user which also includes the CEO, will have to be verified time and again.
• Cloud Access Security Brokers (CPAB): It acts as intermediaries between users and cloud service providers. It could improve an overall cybersecurity strategy.

What Indian government is doing to secure its oil?

• India’s oil and gas PSUs were making efforts to beef up security, and that organisations managing critical infrastructure such as pipelines and refineries were required by the government to implement certain security measures.

Some of the major cyber attacks in India

• A Cyberattack took place on Cosmos bank when hackers siphoned off Rs. 94.42 crores.  Canara Bank ATM servers were targeted in around mid-2018. During the attack more than 300 user’s ATM details were hacked by attackers and wiped off 20 lakh rupees from various bank accounts.
• 1 billion Indian Aadhaar card details were leaked in 2018. UIDAI released the official notification about this data breach and mentioned that around 210 Indian Government websites were hacked.
• Popular microblogging platform Twitter became victim to cyber-attack through a phone spear-phishing attack in 2020. Almost 130 accounts were said to be compromised. 

• 20 million user accounts of the Bangalore-based popular edtech platform Unacademy were breached. The breach had exposed usernames, passwords, date joined, email addresses, first and last names, and other information of the users.

Conclusion

Due to the drastic changes to the conventional functioning of working due to COVID-19 pandemic, cybersecurity emerged as the biggest challenge. As the world has come to a standstill, it becomes more crucial to work in a more cybersecure world. The international efforts are required to put a curb over it.