A month ago, a pipeline carrying roughly 45 percent of fuel supplies for the entire East Coast went offline.

Pipeline cyberattack, a major source of our nation's fuel shut down by hackers demanding ransom.

5,500 miles of a pipeline run by colonial pipeline company were shut down after hackers broke into the company's computer systems,

encrypted certain data, and demanded a ransom to unlock them.

That's what's known as a ransomware attack.

Across the southeast and up the East Coast, gas prices are going up and pumps are going dry.

The pipeline's weeklong shutdown led to panic buying, which caused widespread fuel shortages and temporary price hikes.

And hackers, well they got what they wanted.

Of course the initial thought is you don't want to pay the ransom, you don't want to encourage, you don't want to pay these contemptible criminals.

Colonial pipeline CEO Joe Blount told NPR his company agreed to pay hackers believe to be Russian a ransom of nearly $4.5 million to get its pipeline back online.

When you know that you have 100 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuels and jet fuels that are going to go across the southeastern and eastern seaboard of the United States,

it's a very critical decision to make and if owning that the encryption tool gets you there quicker than it's the decision that had to be made.

Consider this, attacks like the colonial pipeline hack are on the rise and now the US government says it will start treating them like terrorism.

From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish, it's Monday, June 7th.

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What happens to police officers who get caught stealing, lying or tampering with evidence? Each week we open up an internal affairs investigation that used to be secret to find out how well the police police themselves.

Listen to On Our Watch, a podcast from NPR and KQED.

It's considered this from NPR. The director of the FBI says this is a moment like 9-11 when the US had to face a new reality about an existential threat.

In a print interview this week with the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Rae said, quote, there's a shared responsibility not just across government agencies but across the private sector and even the average American.

He wasn't just talking about the colonial pipeline hack. Right now, Rae told the journal, the FBI is investigating around 100 different types of ransomware, many tracing back to hackers in Russia.

We are learning more about the scale of the hack into Microsoft's Exchange Server email software. Hundreds of thousands of government offices, small businesses and schools could be affected.

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