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Oil tanks of the operating company Colonial Pipeline (archive photo)
Photo: Mark Lennihan / AP
One of the largest oil pipelines in the US has been targeted by a hacker attack.
The operating company Colonial Pipeline announced that the pipeline had been temporarily suspended.
The attack affects part of the IT system.
In order to contain the threat, the entire system was switched to offline mode.
An external security company is investigating the incident, and the responsible law enforcement authorities have been informed.
The company continues to work on returning to normal operations and minimizing the impact on customers.
The New York Times wrote that because of the lower energy requirements in the corona pandemic, it was unlikely that the shutdown would have any immediate consequences.
Petrol, diesel, kerosene and heating oil
The Colonial Pipeline extends thousands of kilometers from Texas to New York, mostly underground.
Among other things, gasoline, diesel, kerosene and heating oil are transported - around 2.5 million barrels per day.
According to its own statements, the company supplies more than 50 million consumers, including the US military.
The USA had been rocked by two massive cyber attacks in the past few months.
An attack uncovered in December using software from US company SolarWinds affected thousands of government computers and private networks.
Another attack on Microsoft's Exchange email service became public in March, reportedly affecting at least 30,000 US organizations.
sos / dpa / AFP
