The Intelligencer & Wheeling News-Register - Cyber-Geddon: Could This Be the New American Front?

Op-Ed

By Rep. Bill Johnson

Gas lines backed up for miles. Anxious travelers stranded with no fuel. Tempers flaring at gas pumps and drivers trying to get a few drops of gasoline in their tanks. Commercial airline passengers being inconvenienced when airlines are forced to make non-routine refueling stops to get limited quantities of jet fuel. How did it come to this?

Good question … I'll answer it. But an even more important question is: Is this a precursor of things to come? And I'll attempt to answer that one, too.

On Friday, May 7, we found out through news reports that the Colonial Pipeline had been dealt a deadly blow, completely shut down by the Russian Darkside ransomware group. The 5,500 mile-long Colonial Pipeline provides nearly 100 million gallons of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and heating oil to distribution centers all up and down America's eastern and southeastern coast. From the distribution centers, the critical fuels are loaded onto tankers and transported to gas stations, airports, homes, and businesses throughout the region. But starting that Friday, those fuel tankers stopped rolling and stopped delivering … because there was nothing coming through the pipeline to the distribution centers. When the gasoline in the tanks of gas stations was used up, drivers along America's eastern and southeastern seaboard had nowhere to go.

The Darkside ransomware virus is a complex, sophisticated and malicious virus that takes control of the infected network. And it demands payment -- anywhere between hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars -- to relinquish control back to the owner. In other words, it completely shuts down the business or enterprise until payment is made. In this case, it was the Colonial Pipeline that provides critical fuel for virtually the entire economy of America's east coast.

Such attempts to hack into America's critical infrastructure, industry, national security and government systems aren't new, but they are on the rise. Over the last decade, out of the millions and millions of attempts, over 100 such attacks have been successful. Some say this Colonial Pipeline hack by Darkside is the most damaging one thus far. But I think the implications go much further.

All attacks, including the Darkside hack, reveal weaknesses in our critical networks. Over time, these weaknesses educate, inform, and train potential hackers -- bad actors, mischief-makers, state-sponsored agencies, and others -- on how to take their craft to the next level. They learn from each attempt, especially the successful ones.

So, what's to come? Consider this hypothetical scenario: Imagine for a moment what would happen in America if a four-phased, multi-layered, simultaneous successful attack similar to the Colonial Pipeline hack were to occur to four of our major critical infrastructure areas: transportation, financial services, healthcare, and energy grid. Commercial and military aircraft would be grounded; credit card purchases would not go through; banks could not process transactions; doctors could not access patients' records; life-saving drug prescriptions could not be filled; essential fuels would not flow to consumers; and, the power is shut off at businesses and residences across the country. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that such a "cyber-geddon" would be disastrous and cataclysmic. Virtually everything in America would grind to a halt in a matter of minutes, and lives would ultimately be lost. Countries like China, Russia, Iran, and probably others would relish the idea of accomplishing such a scenario … and, they are putting major portions of their own national resources toward their efforts.

That's why government officials, from the president and elected members of Congress, governors, state legislators, defense authorities, business leaders and others must remain vigilant on the issue of cybersecurity. We can't let today's successful blocks of cyber-attacks lull us into a sense of over confidence … because we have to start the process all over tomorrow.

Because that's what the bad guys are doing.

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