Oil India Ltd under cyberattack at Assam headquarters

Oil India Ltd (OIL) suffered a significant cyberattack at its headquarters in eastern Assam’s Duliajan, with the hacker demanding $75,00,000 in ransom. However, the officials say that the exploration and production work of the company remains unaffected despite the cybersecurity breach.

Sachin Kumar, the Oil India Ltd Manager of Security, filed an FIR with the state police and said the company’s server, network, and other related services were affected due to the ransomware attack.

“OIL is a public sector undertaking. Due to this ransomware cyberattack, OIL and the government exchequer have incurred a huge financial loss as a business through IT has been seriously affected,” Sachin Kumar mentioned in his FIR to the Police.

“The production and drilling activities are not fully reliant on IT resources. The software which deals with business functions including payments to vendors and contractors also has not been affected and is functioning as usual,” OIL spokesperson Tridiv Hazarika told news agency IANS.

The FIR further revealed that the cyber attack occurred on one of the work stations of the G&R (Geological and Reservoir) Department on Sunday.

“After their preliminary investigation, they noticed that OlL’s network, server, and clients’ PCs are facing network outage. Further, it came to their notice that the cyber attacker had demanded $75,00,000 as a ransom through a note from the infected PC,” according to the FIR filed by Sachin Kumar.

Last month, Saket Modi, co-founder of Safe Security, warned India to “strengthen” its national cybersecurity policies and practices after the Lapsus$ group’s notorious activities in the past few months. Recently, the extortion group Lapsus$ has claimed to have hacked well-known companies like Okta, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Microsoft.

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