Republicans bash Biden over pipeline cyberattack, shutdown

Prominent Republicans criticized President Biden over a cyberattack that had shut down most of a major U.S. oil pipeline as of Monday evening.

Colonial Pipeline, which delivers about 45 percent of the fuel consumed on the East Coast, halted operations late last week after revealing a ransomware attack that it said had affected some of its systems. On Monday, the FBI identified a criminal syndicate named DarkSide as creators of the ransomware used in the attack. The group’s members are Russian speakers, and their malware is coded not to attack networks using Russian-language keyboards. “No cyber-gang in Russia can conduct this kind of attack against an American piece of critical infrastructure without the tacit or explicit knowledge of Vladimir Putin’s government,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told “Fox News Primetime” Monday night. “It shows that Joe Biden’s weak policy on Russia is having consequences for the American people.”