Assam OIL Cyber Attack: CID Team Reaches Duliajan, Launches Investigation

Duliajan: Oil India Limited (OIL) has suffered a cyber attack as a result of which its operations have been disrupted in Assam.

This has resulted in an investigation being initiated by the sleuths of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at the Chief Administrative Office of the company in Duliajan on April 14.

As per reports, the hackers had demanded for a whopping ransom of €6875632.50 (over Rs 57 crore) from Oil India Limited, a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU). Employees had reportedly observed outages on April 11.

An official has stated that the ransomware attack is believed to have taken place on April 10. The official also informed that the systems have been closed down since April 11 and added that efforts are underway to fix the issue.

The official also went on to say that they were compelled to disconnect all of their computer systems from the LAN after getting to know that three to four computers had been infected with a virus on April 11.

The company has filed an FIR At the Duliajan Sadar Police Station. While debugging is now in progress, the IT department has not yet determined the extent of the damage.

The official concluded by saying that although the company has had to face similar issues in the past, this time it seems like a serious IT-related crisis that will take time to resolve.

 This incident has raised widespread concerns vis -a- vis the global threat of cyber attacks on power firms.

Meanwhile, a cyber attack is an attempt to disable computers, steal data, or use a breached computer system to launch additional attacks. Cybercriminals use different methods to launch a cyber attack that includes malware, phishing, ransomware, man-in-the-middle attack, or other methods. 

Also read: Assam: Special Court Sentences Man To 10 Years Imprisonment For Sexually Abusing Minor

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