(MENAFN- Trend News Agency)
The Intelligence Bureau and two national cyber security agencies
– CERT-In and NCIIPC – have joined the probe into the ransomware
attack on state-run explorer Oil India Ltd's (OIL) headquarters at
Duliajan in Assam on April 10 asking for a ransom of $75,00,000 (Rs
57 crore), sources sai, Trend reports citing The Times of
India .
The level of the Centre's response to the first publicly known
cyber attack on an Indian oil company is significant as it comes
within less than two months of alleged China-backed hackers
targeting – without success – seven power grid controllers in the
northern region.
The deployment of IB and the Central cyber security agencies
indicates the government is not treating the attack on OIL as a
wanton cyber extortion activity and wants to find out the possible
role of cyber criminal syndicates or foreign-backed players.
Two representatives from each of these agencies reached Duliajan
on Friday to join the probe by the local police following an FIR
filed by OIL two days back.
Separately, OIL has also engaged a Delhi-based private cyber
security agency with international exposure to look into the attack
and chart a restoration road map after sanitising the IT
infrastructure.
Company spokesperson Tridib Hazariak told TOI the attack
affected a few servers and 3-4 individual work stations.
“Drilling operations and production are normal. We are making
normal transactions as our SAP system is functional. Most of the
data is safe since the infected servers were isolated. Currently
being shared through other modes as and when required as our system
has been disconnected from the internet,” he said.
“The impact was limited because the attack came on a Sunday when
only a handful of workstations were in use. When those working
reported network outages, the IT department immediately isolated
them and disconnected the Internet to save data and the IT
infrastructure from being corrupted,” he said.
Though the malware is yet to be identified, Hazarika said the
private cyber security agency has“identified the course of action”
and working on diagnosing, disinfecting and restoring.“It will be
a gradual process. Even the unaffected servers and workstations
will have to undergo diagnosis before being restored section by
section.This may take some time.”
Asked about possible losses, Hazarika said the forward-looking
language of the FIR saying“there may be some financial
implications”, referring to the as-yet unknown aspects of the
attack, was being interpreted as loss to the company or the
exchequer. There is no loss as such, as of now, he said.
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