‘Anonymous’ hackers threaten to target regional oil & gas firms

The UAE’s Adnoc and Enoc are among the list of oil, gas, and energy companies that may come under cyber-attacks on June 20 or closely after that, security firm Symantec has warned.

According to Symantec, a hacker group called Anonymous, which recently threatened to hack corporate sponsors of the Fifa World Cup, has threatened to launch cyber-attacks against oil, gas, and energy companies, specifically the petroleum industry in the Middle East, before, during, and after June 20, 2014.

Anonymous had issued a similar threat last year.

According to Symantec, this year’s attack is also called “Operation Petrol” and is directed against the US dollar being used as the currency to buy and sell oil.

The hackers are also threatening to target government websites of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.

The group has claimed that they have already hacked 204 sites as part of #Op Petrol. However, the list of hacked sites as detailed by the group reveals more travel and tourism-related websites than any major oil and gas-related firms.

The alert comes weeks after the Gulf Information Security Expo & Conference (Gisec) in Dubai where it was revealed that majority of companies in the UAE and the Gulf are not even aware that they have been attacked by cyber criminals.

Majority UAE users hit by cyber bugs happily unaware

Speaking to Emirates 24/7 Nicolas Solling, Director, Technological Services at Help AG had told that apart from banks, oil and gas companies continue to remain very high on the target list for attacks, due to its high impact.

Antonio Forzieri, EMEA Cyber Security Practice Lead at Symantec, told Emirates 24/7 that companies need to be alert to avoid a repeat of the 2012 attack on the electronic infrastructure of Saudi Aramco.

In what is considered as the first major attack on a regional oil and gas firm, the electronic systems of Saudi Aramco was attacked by hackers.

“The group wants to express its stand over the petro dollar issue and therefore will continue to target oil and gas companies,” he said.

According to him, hacking continued to be the primary cause of data breaches in 2013. Hacking accounted for 34 per cent of data breaches in 2013. According to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report 2014, in 2013, there were eight data breaches that netted hackers at least 10 million or more identities per breach, the largest of which was a massive breach of 150 million identities.

In contrast, 2012 saw only one breach larger than 10 million identities.

Following the Anonymous threat against Fifa sponsors, the group managed to deface several Brazilian government websites. It also hacked the Brazilian Foreign Ministry’s server and gained access to emails and attachments.

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