News · July 22, 2021

Hackers demand $50 million from Saudi Aramco

Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco has admitted that hackers are demanding a ransom of $50 million from it after leaking some of its data. The Associated Press reported this on Wednesday, citing information from the company.

“It recently came to light that a limited amount of company data stored by third-party contractors had been indirectly disclosed,” the AP quoted Saudi Aramco as saying. The company did not say which contractor was involved, how the information was leaked or what the hackers were demanding. “We confirm that the data disclosure was not related to a breach of the security of our systems, has no impact on our operations and that the company’s cybersecurity posture remains robust,” Saudi Aramco said.

According to AP, the page it found on darknet (“dark Internet” – Internet pages not indexed by search engines and accessible only through specialized tools for anonymous viewing) reported that hackers had at their disposal about a terabyte of information of Saudi Aramco and that the attackers demand from the company $50 million. Who was behind the hacking attack is unknown.