Oil service company Halliburton is reportedly dealing with a cyberattack affecting business operations at its giant Houston campus, and some global networks, according to multiple US media outlets.
In a statement issued after the news broke, the multinational corporation, which has a hand in most of the world's largest fracking operations, said it was “aware of an issue affecting certain company systems”.
It added it was “working diligently to assess the cause and potential impact” and had “activated our pre-planned response plan and are working internally and with leading experts to remediate the issue”.
However, Halliburton has so far declined to describe the exact nature of the incident, or even formally confirm that a cyberattack had taken place.
Cyberattacks and hacking are becoming increasingly serious problems for energy companies and can be very expensive to fix.
In early 2021, a ransomware attack paralysed the Colonial Pipeline. The pipeline moves fuel oil from Texan refineries to cities on the US East Coast, ending at Washington DC. Approximately 380 million litres of oil would flow through it on an average day. But this stopped on 7 May 2021.
Hacking group DarkSide demanded payment to bring the pipeline back online. A few days later, Colonial paid DarkSide approximately $5m in cryptocurrency for the key to decrypt their systems, and operations resumed on 12 May.
In 2021, Saudi Aramco was also reported to be the victim of a ransomware attack, which infected 35,000 computers and impeded daily operations. This was the second time the company had been hit.
According to research from GlobalData, Offshore Technology’s parent company, concerns about cybersecurity within the oil and gas sector are higher than ever, driven by geopolitical upheaval around the globe and cybercriminals seeking to extort money.
GlobalData analytics show that, despite a 35% decline in mentions of cybersecurity in global oil and gas company filings in Q2 2024 compared to the previous quarter, mentions for the full year will surpass those of 2023 in the next month or two to hit an all-time high.
These concerns are not without foundation, with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and the White House having both been moved to warn of a growing cyber threat to critical national infrastructure organisations.
