Oil Companies Large Halliburton Disrupted by Hack Assault

Oil services giant Halliburton is reportedly dealing with an IT disruption tied to a Wednesday hack attack.

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The corporate told Reuters, which first reported the disruption, that it is nonetheless probing the trigger and scope of the outage, working at the side of “main exterior consultants.”

Talking on situation of anonymity, an individual with information of the assault advised Reuters that the incident appeared to disrupt the corporate’s Houston campus, in addition to some world connectivity, and that the corporate has requested workers not connect with inner IT sources.

An organization spokesperson contacted by CNN refused to substantiate or deny that Halliburton suffered a cyberattack however did acknowledge an unspecified “subject.”

Based in Oklahoma in 1919, publicly traded Halliburton is without doubt one of the world’s largest suppliers of services to the power business. The corporate, now Houston-based, reported second-quarter income of $5.8 billion and internet revenue of $709 million and mentioned that as of the top of June, it counted 49,000 staff working in additional than 70 nations.

Instructing staff not to hook up with the company community is commonly an indication {that a} suspected ransomware an infection has taken maintain, which threatens to unfold crypto-locking malware to all linked methods.

Whereas Halliburton hasn’t confirmed if its disruption is ransomware, it would not be the primary agency within the power business to fall sufferer. Specialists have additionally warned of an increase in massive recreation searching assaults by extra elite ransomware teams in search of greater ransom funds by focusing on bigger victims (see: Ransomware Again on Track to Achieve Record-Breaking Profits).

Though working on the middle of American essential infrastructure, Halliburton – like many essential infrastructure firms – principally determines for itself how a lot cybersecurity to use in its networks. Trade efficiently pushed again in opposition to a bipartisan try in the course of the Obama administration to manage essential infrastructure cybersecurity, rejecting it as heavy-handed and arguing that it could have mired cybersecurity practices in authorities paperwork. The voluntary strategy that is been the established order for greater than a decade has been criticized by Biden administration officers, who’ve tried to make use of present regulatory authorities to create new cybersecurity necessities – with blended success (see: US EPA Nixes Cybersecurity Assessments of Water Systems).

Probably the most notable such assaults in opposition to the U.S. power sector concerned Colonial Pipeline Co., which on Might 7, 2021, was hit by a ransomware-as-a-service operation referred to as DarkSide. Whereas the assault solely disrupted the non-public firm’s billing operations – reasonably than operational know-how atmosphere – the corporate opted to close down its total pipeline.

In distinction, Halliburton is an upstream oil service agency and would not personal or run any oil fields or pipelines. As a substitute, the corporate offers quite a few providers, starting from exploration and drilling to pipeline providers and software program.

Whether or not or not any IT disruption affecting Halliburton may result in pipeline disruptions is not clear.