The US government declared a state of emergency after the country’s largest fuel pipeline was hit by a ransomware cyber-attack.

The Colonial Pipeline was completely taken offline by a group of cyber-criminals at the weekend, which forced the company to halt all pipeline operations.

Hackers seized almost 100 giga-bytes of data and threatened to leak it onto the internet unless they received a payment.

Colonial currently carries 2.5 million barrels each day – worth up to 45 percent of the east coast’s supply of gas, diesel, and jet fuel. Experts believe fuel prices are likely to rise by up to three percent as a result of the shutdown.