The Middle East’s oil and gas industry has been attacked by a group of cyber hackers known as the Stteam group.
Up to 12 separate oil firms in the region have had their ICT infrastructure hacked by the group, according to researchers at the General Dynamic Fidelis group.
Abdelrahman Abdellatif, principal consultant for enterprise business group Middle East at Huawei, believes that hacking is emerging as one of the key threats facing oil and gas firms in the Middle East.
“The threat of hacking is one of the main security issues. Most of the regions oil and gas companies are being targeted by many cyber threats. Any security threat or any penetration to an oil and gas company’s network will definitely result in financial and brand damage,” he said.
This latest spate of attacks have seen the hackers taking control of companies ICT infrastructure and website servers. Trojan backdoors are then used to hack into other systems within the company’s network.
Analysts believe that the attacks are conducted by criminals looking to steal information that they can sell, rather than being politically motivated.
The potential for damage to the Middle East’s oil and gas companies is severe. According to researchers at General Dynamics Fidelis, the Stteam attacks use two different Trojan backdoors. Through the Trojan’s, hackers are able to execute commands, browse directories and move, copy or even delete files.
“This has already happened last year in the Middle East, a company’s network was penetrated and then the brand suffered. The company needed to make a lot of investment to rectify the problems,” he said.
