The Worst Cyberattack to Date on Critical U.S. Infrastructure - Here's Who Did It

ABOVE:  Watch CBN News Senior National Affairs Correspondent Heather Sells report followed by a CBN News' Faith Nation interview with Amy Myers Jaffe, a cybersecurity expert and the director of research at Tufts University. Her new book is titled Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security.  Faith Nation is seen weeknights on the CBN News Channel.  

The Biden administration says it's "all hands on deck" to restore a pipeline that delivers nearly half of the fuel supply to the East Coast. It's the result of the worst cyberattack to date on critical U.S. infrastructure. 

The cyberattack shut down the Colonial Pipeline – a 5,500-mile network of pipelines that carries gas, diesel, and jet fuel from Texas to New Jersey.

Federal officials say an eastern-European criminal organization known as "Darkside" appears to be responsible for this cyberextortion crime. 

The group has a long history of ransomware attacks in which hackers shut down a company's website or computer operations until it agrees to pay as much as millions of dollars. The DarkSide gang avoids targeting organizations in former Soviet bloc nations.

The White House is drafting an executive order on cyberwarfare, creating a series of digital safety standards for federal agencies and contractors that develop software for the government.

Former DHS official Elizabeth Neumann said, "We have seen attacks on critical infrastructure over the past five years, but nothing of this size and scope, but this also kind of foretells this is what life is likely to be like in the future."

Ransomware attacks have cost western nations tens of billions of dollars in losses in the past three years.

Officials are hoping to get the pipeline back up and running before shortages create a spike in gas prices. Overnight, gasoline futures jumped more than three percent to $2.22 – the highest since May of 2018.