Cyber attacker demands ₹57 Cr ransom from Oil India
After suffering a major cyberattack that disrupted its operations in Assam, PSU major Oil India Limited (OIL) has now received a ransom demand of USD 75,00,000 (over ₹57 crore) from the cyber attacker, officials said on Wednesday.
A case was registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act, 2000, after the company lodged a complaint with the police.
In the complaint, OIL Manager (Security) Sachin Kumar said both the company and the government exchequer incurred huge financial losses due to the cyberattack – ransomware, as the business through the IT system was seriously affected.
The cyberattack took place on April 10 at OIL’s one of the workstations of the Geological and Reservoir department, but it was intimated by the IT department on Tuesday, he said.
“After their preliminary investigation, it came to their notice that OIL’s network, server and clients PCs are facing network outage. Further, it also came to their notice that cyber attacker has demanded USD 75,00,000 as a ransom through a note from the infected PC,” Kumar said.
He said, currently the server, network and related services of the company are affected.
A senior Assam Police official in Dibrugarh district said they registered a case under the various sections of the IPC and IT Act, and started an investigation into the matter. OIL spokesperson Tridiv Hazarika has said that the company is working on repairing the system in phases and “it will take time”.
“Our online systems are down and we are working offline. The drilling and production work has been unaffected. The data are being saved offline now and it will be uploaded later when the IT system will run again,” he said.
A senior official of the OILs pipeline headquarters at Narengi in Guwahati told PTI that they have shut down their entire network, although their system has not suffered any attack as of now. “Our work is badly affected as we are fully dependent on the internet network. Our IT engineers are constantly monitoring the situation and they are fully prepared to thwart any cyber attack,” the official said.
(With inputs from agencies)
