‘’…we ought to pass a law immediately that makes this kind of hacking subject to a death penalty and the…’’
Newt Gingrich who is a former speaker of the house is not finding the colonial pipeline hack funny as he calls for the killing of the cyber attackers.
He further described the incident as a declaration of war to the country.
However, he is aware that for this to happen, it needs to be backed up by the laws and have national security approval. He also seeks the intervention of the President.
In his words, he said;
‘’On the national security part, we ought to pass a law immediately that makes this kind of hacking subject to a death penalty and the law should include a provision that the president, through a judicial process, should be able to order the killings of anybody overseas who is doing this,’’ he told Sean Hannity on Fox News.
He also emphasized on how the issue should be treated as an act of war.
‘It’s an act of war against the United States to do stuff like this.
‘We need to react to it as an act of war, and the American people are going to look at their representatives and their senators and say if you don’t fix this, your successor will. I won’t put up with it, and I won’t put up with you if you don’t fix it.’
The Colonial Pipeline Cyber Attack
The Colonial Pipeline is the largest oil pipeline in the United States. It carries 2.5 million barrels of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other refined petroleum products daily.
It has been forced to suspend “all” its activities after having suffered a cyber-attack.
In a statement released Saturday, Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline reported a “cybersecurity attack’’ against it.
“We proactively shut down certain systems to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all gas pipeline operations and affected some of our technological systems,” the text reads.
According to the report, Colonial Pipeline also reported the incident to law enforcement and other federal agencies, and they are taking steps to resolve the problem.
In addition, he noted that the pipeline has already hired a cybersecurity company to investigate “the nature and scope of this incident, which is ongoing.”
It was indicated that President Joe Biden was informed about what happened and that the Government is working to help the company.
For its part, Bloomberg reports that the perpetrators of the attack are members of the group of ‘hackers’ DarkSide, who have stolen from the company about 100 gigabytes of information.
They would have done it on Thursday, a day before the company suspended the service.
Meanwhile, the last time Colonial’s pipeline network was hit by a stoppage was Hurricane Harvey, which hit the Gulf of Mexico in 2017.
In recent years, various US entities and companies have been the target of cyber-attacks; the most recent one affected US electoral systems during the presidential elections of November 2020.
But let’s keep our fingers crossed as we hope the issue to be resolved soon.
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