Cyber attack on East Coast pipeline

Discussion in 'General Survival and Preparedness' started by DKR, May 8, 2021.


  1. DKR

    DKR Raconteur of the first stripe

    A cyberattack forced the shutdown of one of the largest pipelines in the United States, in what appeared to be a significant attempt to disrupt vulnerable energy infrastructure. The pipeline carries refined gasoline and jet fuel up the East Coast from Texas to New York.

    The operator of the system, Colonial Pipeline, said in a statement late Friday that it had shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which it says carries 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel supplies, in an effort to contain the attack on its computer networks. Earlier Friday, there were disruptions along the pipeline, but it was unclear whether that was a direct result of the attack.
    (Cyberattack Forces a Shutdown of a Top U.S. Pipeline Operator)

    Gonna be a fun summer, best get the winter heating oil soon...while you still can
     
  2. HK_User

    HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

    And increase insulation in your home.
     
  3. madmax

    madmax Far right. Bipolar. Veteran. Don't push me.

    We were warned over and over.
     
  4. Bandit99

    Bandit99 Monkey+++ Site Supporter+

    Not only heat but all fuel... Also, I heard there is a great corn shortage so feed is going up at least 30% which will be reflected in everything... It's all coming together for summer fun and I wait for the boot to drop...and I'm pretty sure it will and soon.
     
  5. 3M-TA3

    3M-TA3 Cold Wet Monkey

    A great many utilities are easily compromised. Engineers are great at making things work, but not so great at making them secure. It's only after it becomes an issue that it's taken seriously and even then remediation is usually inadequate. Twenty some years ago I did a security audit of the control center for the South East power grid. Their use of technology was absolutely amazing and the control room had a real time display of the power grid. With a few keystrokes they could route power where it was needed to correct outages. I actually got to observe this when I toured it. What they had then would be impressive even today for it's functionality,

    For all it's technical accomplishment no attention had been given to security. Fed Gov in an amazing act of forethought had wanted to know if the US power grid was secure from hackers and had hired several to launch a mock attack. It was coordinated and went to the point where to my understanding a significant could be shut down and even damaged by a few keystrokes. Pretty scary stuff. My audit of this particular control center showed weakness everywhere. I found nothing that could have been considered even moderately secure. Default passwords everywhere, you name it. I even managed to crack a few of the passwords that had been changed using social engineering techniques and I'm not exactly a hacker.

    EDIT: To clarify, I wasn't part of the effort to expose the vulnerabilities but the post exercise remediation effort. I didn't even get a list of what was found for that location, but did get to read the executive summary, which was almost a book in itself. I think they didn't want us to just focus on what was found and ignore anything not listed. It also allowed them to compare notes to make sure we did a thorough job.
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2021
  6. oil pan 4

    oil pan 4 Monkey+++

    And also remember there's not enough truck drivers to deliver gasoline this summer when the truckers fled the trucking industry after being laid-off and furloughed during the plandemic about 1 year ago.
    Nope they didn't just sit at home and wait for the government to tell them it's safe to go back to work. The ones that could went and got jobs in the booming construction industry.
     
  7. SB21

    SB21 Monkey+++

    A buddy of mine works for a petroleum hauling company,, he said when the plandemic hit ,, a lot of the older drivers retired ,, he said there were a lot more older drivers than you think there were.
     
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  8. Ura-Ki

    Ura-Ki Grampa Monkey

    Remember pre 9/11 and pre Patriot Act?
    As a kid, I used to ride my bike up to the main gate at the Portland Air National Guard, simply wave to the guards and then ride over to the flight line and watch them work on the F-4s!
    Security wasn't all that concerned about a kid back then! Now days, you cannot get anywhere near that gate!
    Grand Dad and I used to sneak across the dam to go fishing at his favorite spot, now, you cannot even drive up to the gate that blocks the road across the dam! I a lot of ways, security of physical things were delt with quickly, but it seemed internal security was never that big a deal!
     
  9. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    Corn and grain in general by this fall will be a lot more than 30% higher. And its not just corn Wheat and Beans are going to skyrocket as well. I am not big into grain and do a 2/3 - 1/3 crop lease on my grain fields. Not a lot but that 1/3 I get works out to around 160,000-170,000 pounds of corn (2857-3035 bushel) per year. Really wishing I had put more than 60,000 pounds in the grain bank last fall. Rotate the fields around between Alfalfa for hay one year, corn for 2 years, wheat with dbl crop beans, then 2 years of orchard grass and then back to alfalfa and repeat. All set up to generate feed I don't have to buy and wheat bean years I just swap the wheat and beans for corn. But with 6 fields in play I always have alfalfa or orchard grass hay going, and corn going into the grain bank to use as feed or play the price up/down game with..... my version of gambling. We decided to do 4 of the fields in corn last week and burn off the alfalfa and orchard grass on the ones with it. Pork, Beef and Poultry are also on the rise so from my perspective things look pretty good for a producer and not very good for the consumers. And I am going to complain for the next 5 years about dropping $9.40 per 2x4s for the lumber I needed to finish the end of a barn. Damn same 2x4s were like $1.78 a year ago!
     
  10. TnAndy

    TnAndy Senior Member Founding Member

    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
  11. Tempstar

    Tempstar Monkey+++

    Back in the 80's I once worked at the Myrtle Beach Air Force base for two weeks on a one day pass. Also used to pull up to the gate at LeJeune and tell them I was going to the BX and get waved through. Those days are long gone.
    Our company recently dodged a ransomeware attack and IT has tightened the screws even more, and I see it getting even worse. As long as there is profit to be made by hacking it will continue to get worse.
     
  12. Gator 45/70

    Gator 45/70 Monkey+++

    Yeah, If I wanted my 1960's aged and leaking pipeline replaced I'd shut it down and holler its under attack so Uncle Sugar will fund the replacement cost's of a hardened secure pipeline.
    No mention of the manual by-pass valves on this pipeline?
    These were put in place in the 60's before mal-ware was invented.
    Where's da beef ?
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2021
  13. Bandit99

    Bandit99 Monkey+++ Site Supporter+

    @TnAndy Is that a sawmill you're showing in those photos with all the 2x4s? I ask because I have so much wood in logs (and more coming daily!) that I am considering a sawmill but don't know a damn thing about them. I have mountains of firewood, split and in rounds, so I really don't need more and thinking it might behoove me to turn all these logs into lumber but rather than watch them rot.
    A buddy brought over his Alaska Mill, which is nothing more that a frame attached to a chainsaw, but that type of set up is too slow, too time consuming so thinking of a real mill. An Alaska Mill is fine for a few slabs but I got more than a hundred logs on the ground.

    Anyway, if that is a mill, can I PM you and we talk about it?
     
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  14. TnAndy

    TnAndy Senior Member Founding Member

    PM sent.

    But yes, that is a Woodmizer bandmill. I started with an Alaskan mill 40 years ago, but as you say, way too slow. You CAN do things with it hard to do with other mills.....mill a log right where it falls, for example, or mill a timber out as long as the tree......I did an 8x10 main beam in my shop building 36' long. So they have their place, but volume isn't one of them !

    That pile of 2x4 (over 100) is all out of one tree. 22" diameter poplar, bucked into four 12' sawlogs. 2x4 separated by the log, from the butt log on the left to the last log up the tree on the right. One tree, over 100 2x4's......tree worth 1,000 bucks these days if you can use the lumber rather than buy it.
     
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  15. Gator 45/70

    Gator 45/70 Monkey+++

    Those 2x4's are worth about 100,000 dollars
    Biggest thing going today is lumber theft at new home const sites
     
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  16. madmax

    madmax Far right. Bipolar. Veteran. Don't push me.

    I shoulda built that darn porch on the cabin last summer.
     
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  17. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    I started this with cheap pine 2x4s so wanted to finish it with cheap pine 2x4s for 2 reasons #1 I am lazy and the oak I have to work with from the mill requires pilot holes and screws, the pine requires the nail gun and a level. Second Rough cut oak 2x4s don't jive well with pine and things get all out of willy whack. A third reason the Oak Lumber is more valuable than the pine, people paid $10-$12 for 8-10' oak 2x4s and the pines cost between $1.68 and $2.50 so for every oak 2x4 I sold I could buy 4 good quality select 2x4s.

    Now with crap pine 2x4s going for $8.75-$10.40 it makes more sense to start milling for myself now and well Oak Lumber has not gone up as of yet on par with the pine so I come no further ahead by selling oak to buy pine. Wish I had pine trees to work with but I have White Oaks, Red Oaks, Shagbark Hickory and Pecans.

    24x40 with 10' on the eaves All Steel Carport. 6" fiber concrete floor. All total when finished I will have around $8,000 into it.... even with buying the ungodly expensive 2x4s to finish the East end. Same building today with same materials I would easily hit $20,000. Debated long and hard about combining the wood to the steel frame to enclose it, but it has worked out very well and turned out very solid. Thing that saw the biggest price increase were the 4" self tapping screws to attach the wood to the metal..... when I finally did find another box of them last week the box of 100 burned me for $53...... boxes of 100 I bought a year ago were $24.99. Same Concrete floor would be 50% higher to pour today than it was last year. I bought the carport storm damaged for $1000 previous owner said he paid $4200 for it new a year before a tree limb hit it and bent the top rail on back right corner which was easy enough to bend straight once I had the frame down and on the ground.

    Going to add another concrete pad on the right side and build a lean to off of it and put the sawmill track and mill head under it. 12' x 24' in the back of the building I am building a 12x12 cold room with 15k AC and Koolbot type thingy to keep it in the 36-38 degree range and heavily insulating it. Other side 12x12 is going to be my carcass break down room and then over to the commercial kitchen for cutting, grinding and mixing. All for my personal butchering. Why because I called the packing plant I have used for the last 13 years the other day and right now they and every other packing plant are booked out for 12-18 Months and raised their prices .60 cents per pound on the hook for processing. Not what you want to hear when you have 6 hogs ready and 2 steers that will be ready in 2 months. My little existing parlor is good for one hog or one steer but can do 200 chickens per hour LOL. My mill track is long enough to do a 28' log into a beam and I need a 24' oak beam to go from cold room to break down room to bolt my trolley rail on to. I am lazy and it is a lot less work to push a carcass hanging from a hook on trolley casters over the break down table.

    Have had both Woodmizer and Hud-Son sawmills Woodmizer is over all a better mills with more bells and whistles available. Hud-Son are very good mills at a much lower cost and use Woodmizer bands but not as many easy features for lazy people :) That being said I like the Hud-Son better, it was my first mill and I just like the way it feels and operates. At the end of the day they both spin and chew through a log :) The thing about any Mill is it is only a asset if you use it enough to make it pay for itself either in rough cut lumber sales or in savings on yer own projects. The first barn I built wholly from post oaks paid for the mill about twice. My Hudson is a 330 pro and can take logs up to 30" in diameter Replaced the engine a few years ago with a new honda 21hp V twin (Which is what most of their new mills come with.) I use Woodmizer silver tips found them to be more economical for me than the standard bands. May take another look at that though as the last case I bought were considerable more expensive than the previous case was. Might be worth it now to buy standard bands and sharpen them as needed.


    DSC02175.JPG DSC02177.JPG

    Not a great pic of the building before I started converting it. Initially put it up with that bent top rail. Ended up unscrewing the end and taking the 10' section of tube back off to bend it straight. It made the end post lean in about 4" Took about 6 hours to take it apart. load it up and bring it home and about 12 hours to put it all back together here. Worth saving $3000 bucks or more. Initially it was just a place to put the tractors and trailers under and to hide in the shade and have a cold beer or three.
    DSC01931.JPG

    If you have a sawmill and have a shortage of firewood yer doing something very wrong :) I end up with more slab and limbs than I know what to do with. And have stacks like this all over the farm. Yet another reason to put the mill on a fixed pad and keep all the lumber and firewood in one general area. Easier to bring the logs to the mill anyway.
    DSC01318.JPG
     
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  18. Bandit99

    Bandit99 Monkey+++ Site Supporter+

    T5R, I understand that everything will increase with the price of grains and beans, etc. going up but why are they going up? I'm thinking since you farm in a big way that you might have a feel for what is the cause.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2021
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  19. oil pan 4

    oil pan 4 Monkey+++

    This all smells oddly familiar.
    Who remembers during the obama administration when there was a cyber attack what seemed like like every other week where china more than likely or russia was stealing secret and top secret info. They stole the plans for planes like the F22 and F35, variations weapons, ect.
    Seems like it's all happening again.
    I don't believe in coincidence.
     
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  20. SB21

    SB21 Monkey+++

    Hell ,,, with all of these commies we have in the democrap party ,, it's just a guess which one gave out the password .
     
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