Infamous Virus possibly behind Cyber Hack at Saipem

A cyber hack targeting Saipem an oil services company in Italy which derailed over 300 PCs was probably because of one variant of Shamoon the infamous destructive virus. The assault struck servers located inside Aberdeen, India, Middle East and to some extent Italy via one Shamoon virus sample. Following the hack, security experts are working with caution for wholly reinstating operations as also preventing further attacks.

It's presumed the Shamoon variant's destruction would be considerable as viruses of related nature have been employed within certain extremely harmful assaults during the past. Shamoon's utility in 2012 starting, collapsed innumerable PCs of RasGas Co. Ltd and Saudi Aramco the energy firms of Middle East. After that during late 2016, Shamoon reappeared within several sequential assaults within the Middle East which went on through the early period of 2017 following which it became dormant. www.itnews.com.au posted this, December 13, 2018.

Mauro Piasere innovation and digital chief of Saipem in an interview for Reuters said the assault collapsed 300-400 servers along with a maximum of 100 PCs from an aggregate of some 4,000 systems at Saipem. There won't be any loss of data as the company regularly kept a backup of its computers, including the affected ones. According to the company, the hack was first spotted on December 10 while it didn't know who the attacker was.

Adam Meyers Vice-President of Intelligence at CrowdStrike stated that the Saipem breach's initial technical examination displayed resemblances with Shamoon attacks as well as that there was a possibility of Iran too being behind it, while it couldn't immediately be said anything about the exact motive of the hack.

Now virus Shamoon's infection deactivates PCs via overwriting the MBR (master boot record) file because of which the devices just can't be booted. According to Leon Panetta erstwhile Defense Secretary of USA, the Saudi Aramco hack of 2012 was perhaps an unprecedented cyber assault targeted at a private firm. Saipem holds Saudi Aramco as its biggest client. Saipem of itself is a major sub-sea construction and engineering company that's runs under the control of CDP an Italian national lender along with Eni an oil company.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/17/2018