Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer by daily output, was the victim of a hacking attack that stole 1 TB of confidential data. The data were put up for sale on the darknet for the cryptocurrency Monero, according to Bleeping Computer.
The hacker group ZeroX says the stolen database contains full information on more than 14,000 of the company’s employees, as well as a list of its clients and documents relating to Saudi Aramco’s refineries.
The data were obtained by breaching third-party contractors of Saudi Aramco, the company claims. This was not a ransomware attack.
Samples of about 1 GB of data are being sold for $2,000 in Monero. The price for the full database is $5 million, though the attackers are willing to negotiate the price.
For exclusive rights to the database with its subsequent deletion by the hackers, the group has set a price of $50 million.
As reported by Kaspersky Lab, from July 2020 to July 2021 the volume of cyber extortion and crimes involving digital assets worldwide reached $1 billion.
Read ForkLog’s bitcoin news on our Telegram — news on cryptocurrencies, prices and analytics.