According to the Reuters report, the Mexican state-owned petroleum company Pemex detected a cyberattack on Sunday. The hacker has demanded $5 million in bitcoins as ransom. The hacker told Reuters that the Pemex had missed a special discount by not paying immediately after the ransomware was found in the company’s’ systems.
According to five employees of the company, Pemex shut down all the computers across Mexico when the cyberattack was detected, leading to freezing systems such as payments.
Pemex denies the impact of the cyberattack.
Pemex informed that its storage and distribution facilities were operating normally and that the attack had affected less than 5% of its computers. The company said in a statement that “Let’s avoid rumors and disinformation.” An employee who works in the company’s production said that his division was not affected by the hack.
Is this hack similar to the crazy Russian hacker?
There was some confusion about which ransomware was used to execute the cyberattack. One Pemex official said that the company was attacked by Ryuk. However, Reuters saw a ransom note that appeared on Pemex computers that pointed to a darknet website affiliated with “DoppelPaymer” ransomware.
The similar ransomware was used to attack Chile’s Agriculture Ministry and the town of Edcouch in Texas.
