Pemex

History

2019: Attack of a virus racketeer

On November 11, 2019 Pemex announced an attack of a virus racketeer on the computers as a result of which the Mexican state oil and gas group was forced to stop administrative work.

The Reuters agency knew of it from the staff of Pemex and e-mails which intended for reading only in the company.

Pemex announced an attack of a virus racketeer on the computers as a result of which the Mexican state oil and gas group was forced to stop administrative work

In one of such messages it is said that malefactors attacked Pemex by means of the Ryuk virus which is usually used for attacks to the large companies with an annual turnover from $0.5 million to $1 billion.

Pemex made the official statement and reported that cyber attacks "were neutralized timely" therefore infected there were only 5% of computers.

Affirms that the company continued normal work, and objects for production and storage of oil did not suffer. Added to Pemex that the company often is exposed to cyberthreats, but any of them was not successful for malefactors yet.

However on November 10, 2019 the technology center Pemex in Mexico City detected the attack from racketeers who could "block the screen of the computer or cipher the password the important in advance selected files".

Pemex added that it hopes for solution within 48 hours, and warned users through the whole country that they did not turn on the computers.

In the separate internal e-mail which is also studied by Reuters agency, the company warned employees about need to be disconnected from koprorativny network and to create the backup copy of important information from hard drives.

In the publication it is said that on Monday, November 11, three employees of Pemex were forced to stop work as access to a number of computer systems, for example, to processing systems of payments was blocked.^[1]

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