Saudi Aramco has seen an increase in attempted cyberattacks since the final quarter of 2019, which the company has so far successfully countered, the state oil giant’s chief information security officer said.
“Overall there is definitely an increase in the attempts of (cyber) attacks, and we are very successful in preventing these attacks at the earliest stage possible,” Khalid al-Harbi told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“The pattern of the (cyber) attacks is cyclical, and we are seeing that the magnitude is increasing, I would suspect that this will continue to be a trend,” he said without giving further details on who was behind the attacks.
Saudi Arabia has been the target of frequent cyberattacks, including the Shamoon virus, which cripples computers by wiping their disks and has hit both government ministries and petrochemical firms, the latest of which was in 2017.
Aramco, which pumps 10% of global oil supply, experienced its largest cyberattack to date in August 2012, when a Shamoon virus attack damaged around 30,000 computers and was aimed at stopping oil and gas production at the biggest OPEC exporter.