On Dec. 8th, 2011, Daniel Fineren reported for Reuters on how the oil industry is coming under increasing attack by hackers. An IT manager for Shell Europe, in commenting on the increasing industrial espionage oil companies face, said that a cyberattack on oil distribution "will cost lives and it will cost production, it will cost money, cause fires and cause loss of containment, environmental damage – huge, huge damage." The same IT manager said that oil companies face more cyberattacks day by day, and these cyberattacks were quite intricate; the hackers silently collected "information over weeks or months before attacking specific targets within company."
The article notes that computers control nearly all of the oil production and distribution systems worldwide, so the energy industry is particularly vulnerable to cyberattack. Moreover, the energy industry can't quickly respond to new forms of cyberattack. The article quoted another oil company IT head as saying energy companies can't shut down operations to update vulnerable systems and install security patches because "Oil needs to keep on flowing."
This brings us to the big concern: a cyberattack wrecking the world oil supply. Another oil company IT expert, in commenting on a cyberattack, said "If they could bring down one of the big players in the oil and gas market you can imagine what this will do for the oil price – it would blow the market."
The source article can be found here.
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