Precautionary measures taken in the wake of cyber attacks on the world’s biggest oil company and its largest LNG exporter continue some three weeks after the first attack.Neither oil nor gas operations at either Saudi Aramco – hit by the Shamoon virus on 15 August – or Qatar’s RasGas, which was hit on the 27 August, have been affected, the two state-owned behemoths say. But some Aramco emails were still not working as recently as 5 September, and both RasGas and state-owned Qatar Petroleum (QP) have severely curtailed normal internet and email usage, sources tell MEES.
“At RasGas it is really serious. They are hand carrying documents that would have been emailed before. And at QP they have really restricted internet and email. It is just a precautionary measure, but it is a real pain. They are obviously really worried,” says one Qatar-based executive. Sophisticated protection mechanisms around core operations clearly worked, but the hacker attack on Aramco, which impacted some 30,000 work stations, has clearly jolted the Saudi government. (CONTINUED - 354 WORDS)
