The recent attacks against Saudi Aramco production facilities have damaged the industry’s biggest oil producer & delayed its oil production abilities, creating turmoil in international gas and oil markets. US intelligence officials and Saudi government officials have stated that these attacks were waged by Iran, who is instead blaming Yemeni rebels for the attacks.
This is only the next step in a cyberwar that has been waged between the 2 countries for years now. Other countries are now getting caught in the crossfire.
During the last few years, Iran has been deploying destructive viruses against the Saudi Arabian kingdom, its archnemesis. However, the kingdom & its gas and oil industry haven’t been quick enough in shoring up their defenses, which have raised red flags regarding the chances of long-term fallout in the area, stated experts. Investors should be expected cyber espionage & malicious activity flareups at an increasing rate down the road, which included the likelihood of other destructive attacks being waged against companies that aren’t related to Aramco.
Saudi Arabian officials refused to comment.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been fighting a cyberwar for over 10 years now.
Activities across the entire Gulf region are mostly concentrated on gas and oil companies, which collect terabytes of important data that are related to oilfields and drilling. The gas and oil sector have been relying on IoT devices, which are potentially vulnerable, for measuring data related to oil availability and for powering the machinery responsible for refining, extracting, and finding the oil.
Iranian nuclear facilities were ruined by a powerful virus named Stuxnet during the 2000s. This software was extremely sophisticated and built using a certain modular format. Not only could it be used for extracting intelligence, but it could also be used for controlling & destroying sensitive machinery.
The Stuxnet virus was thought to have been created by US and Israeli cyber experts.
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