Don’t Put Gas In Plastic Bags, Safety Agency Warns Fuel Hoarders

ACROSS AMERICA — Before we get to the government’s actual warning to panicked East Coasters not to fill plastic bags with gasoline, let’s go back to the early days of the pandemic when enough people filled their shopping carts with toilet paper that the rest of Americans were in danger of running out.

The consequences of the latter were mostly irritations — to our bums, from having to use the cheap, sandpaper-like stuff, and with the people who made it rough for everyone else.

But gasoline is flammable, people. This is basic science. And common sense. At no time ever has putting it in a plastic Ziploc or zip-tied garbage bag been a good idea.

You may be asking, as well you should, is this for real?

The hacked Colonial Pipeline went back online Wednesday — but not before the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, amid a flurry of tweets about the safe handling of gasoline in containers, warned Americans apparently unfazed by the potential of blowing themselves up not to do it.

“Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline,” the agency tweeted, writing in a followup message:

“We know this sounds simple, but when people get desperate they stop thinking clearly. They take risks that can have deadly consequences. If you know someone who is thinking about bringing a container not meant for fuel to get gas, please let them know it's dangerous.”

• Related: Gas Shortages, Prices Spike During Colonial Pipeline Shutdown

Don’t hoard it either, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Wednesday.

“Much as there was no cause for, say, hoarding toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic,” Granholm told reporters, “there should be no cause for hoarding gasoline, especially in light of the fact that the pipeline should be substantially operational by the end of this week and over the weekend.”

The crisis isn’t over. Colonial, whose 5,550-mile pipeline system runs from Texas to New Jersey and supplies 45 percent of fuel used on the East Coast, said late Wednesday afternoon it would be “several days” before the pipeline is operating at full capacity.

Still, Friday’s cyberattack on the pipeline continued to cause panic, both as thousands of gas stations across the East Coast ran out of fuel and as concern increased over the vulnerability of America’s energy grid.

The FBI said Monday a ransomware gang called DarkSide, which operates in Eastern Europe, was responsible for the cyberattack, the worst cyberattack ever on U.S. infrastructure. In such attacks, hackers typically lock computer systems by encrypting data, and then demand a huge ransom.

Colonial Pipeline paid $5 million in extortion fees demanded by the hackers, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing two sources familiar with the matter. Earlier in the week, the company said it had no plans to pay the ransom.

The gang has been active since August and, typical of the most potent ransomware gangs, is known to avoid targeting organizations in former Soviet bloc nations, The Associated Press reported.

Russian intelligence has been known to cooperate with cyber criminals, but investigators haven’t determined if a foreign government is involved in what the Department of Homeland Security’s regional office in Boston said “could prove to be the most devastating ransomware attack on critical infrastructures in the U.S. to date.”

Colonial was fortunate the attacker was at least ostensibly motivated by profit and not geopolitics, Ed Amoroso, the chief executive at TAG Cyber, told The Associated Press.

He and other cybersecurity experts said the attack should serve as a stark warning for operators of critical infrastructure — including electrical and water utilities and energy and transportation companies — to harden security systems that put them at risk by state-backed hackers bent on more serious destruction.

“For companies vulnerable to ransomware, it's a bad sign because they are probably more vulnerable to more serious attacks," Amoroso told The AP.

Russian cyberwarriors, for example, crippled the electrical grid in Ukraine during the winters of 2015 and 2016.

Cyberextortion attempts in the U.S. have become a death-by-a-thousands-cuts phenomenon in the past year, with attacks on hospitals forcing delays in cancer treatment, interrupting schooling and paralyzing police and city governments.

Colonial said that before restarting its operations, it had worked with cybersecurity experts and strengthened its security measures.