- Fuel shortages in the southeastern US continued Friday as gas stations waited for petroleum deliveries from the now-operational Colonial Pipeline. Nearly nine in 10 gas stations in Washington, DC, were closed as of Friday morning. In North Carolina, just three in 10 were open. [Washington Post / Jacob Bogage]
- Colonial Pipeline, which shut down its services after falling victim to a ransomware cyberattack last Friday, spent much of this week getting everything back online. But that hasn’t stopped gas prices from rising, or filled up gas stations along the East Coast. [USA Today / Brett Molina and Nathan Bomey]
- Contrary to public reports from early in the week, Colonial Pipeline paid $5 million in ransom money to DarkSide, the hackers who launched the ransomware attack, mere hours after it occurred — in exchange for an encryption key to unriddle the malware. But the tool worked too slowly, and they couldn't use it. [Bloomberg / William Turton, Michael Riley, and Jennifer Jacobs]
- Ransomware attacks are fairly prevalent in the US. And institutions are often forced to pay to reach an end. Baltimore and Atlanta, for example, have been hit hard by ransomware attacks; Lake City and River Beach, two cities in Florida, were forced to pay a combined total of more than $1 million to unfreeze their computer systems after a cyberattack in 2019. [CNET / Andrew Morse]
- At the White House on Thursday, President Joe Biden said the current gas shortages should be alleviated by the coming weekend. He urged consumers to refrain from panic buying, which often prolongs shortages. "Help is on the way, we're going to get through this, as we always do as Americans, and we're going to do it together," Biden said. [NPR / Brian Naylor]
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