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Hackers had reportedly stolen 1 TB of data from the company and put it on sale for $5 million on the dark web
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They also said that for $50 million in cryptocurrencies they would deliver the data to a single buyer and then scrub all it from their servers
The Saudi Arabian Oil Company, arguably the largest of its kind in the world, has acknowledged that it had seen a data breach that has a potential $50-million “ransom” demand attached to it, said local reports on Thursday, July 22.
Hackers had reportedly stolen 1 TB of data from the company, which is popularly known as Saudi Aramco or just Aramco, and had put it on sale for $5 million on the dark web.
However, the hackers had told some news portals that they were open to a one-off sale as well.
As part of this, they would charge $50 million in cryptocurrencies to deliver the data to a single buyer and then scrub all the data from their servers as part of the sale agreement.
However, the threat actor was quoted by a tech news portal as saying that this was not a ransom demand.
The oil-producer acknowledged the data breach late on Wednesday, said local reports.
They quoted the company telling a news agency: “Aramco recently became aware of the indirect release of a limited amount of company data which was held by third-party contractors.”
It, however, added: “We confirm that the release of data was not due to a breach of our systems, has no impact on our operations, and the company continues to maintain a robust cybersecurity posture.”
Then again, there has been no official word from Aramco on whether it was planning to pay the threat actor to get them to scrub the data off their computers forever.