I'm not a pipeline expert, but I've been doing computers sense the early 90s. You have a pipe. It has pumps and valves. You have a computer that controls it all. The computer gets hacked. UNPLUG THE DAM COMPUTER... and plug in another one. Then restart the pumps. If they are too incompetent to figure out a workaround then get the hell out of the way and let someone else try.
If there is one thing I've learned with computers its that the guy at the console is god. There is no such thing as taking over from a remote location. Anyone that tells you differently has been watching too many movies. Send real actual human beings out the the pumps, unplug the dam computer and just turn the pump on manually. Yeah, a person might have to watch the pressure and flow rates etc rather than the computer. So the hell what. Get the dam gas flowing again morons.
I got into a BIG argument with some pump guy... and he made some very good points. Some of which are that pumps and pipes of this size are NOT similar to the pipes you are familiar with, the scale is outside your experience... Whether it is the scale of the volume and pressures to move a liquid of that mass or the pumps that don't just "start-up", the valves also are not some simple lever mechanism. Should it be simple... YES, I "think" so... but I am not a pipe mechanic.
Maybe I'm being naive and over simplifying, but this was supposedly a computer hack and they were demanding a ransom? So I keep comping back to just unplug the network find the compromised systems and replace them. Then people say it is stuxnet and it got to all the individual parts... it all sounds like a lot of excuses.
If this stuff is that vulnerable why isn't it better protected? There is more to this story. Every angle I come at it just leads me back to wondering if the gas isn't flowing because the powers that be don't want it flowing.