Aramco, One of the World's Richest Companies, Facing $50M Extortion After Contractor Hack

One of the world's richest companies, Saudi Arabian Oil Co., is facing a $50 million cyber ransom demand for data that was likely leaked by one of its contractors.

Better known as Saudi Aramco, the company acknowledged it "recently became aware of the indirect release of a limited amount of company data which was held by third-party contractors."

Aramco confirmed the leak was not a result of its own systems being breached.

An offer was made for Aramco's data to be deleted in exchange for $50 million in cryptocurrency. Another timer counted down from $5 million. The party behind the ransom plot is still unknown.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below:

The oil firm did not say which contractor found itself affected nor whether that contractor had been hacked or if the information leaked out another way.

"We confirm that the release of data was not due to a breach of our systems, has no impact on our operations and the company continues to maintain a robust cybersecurity posture," Aramco said.

A page accessed by the AP on the darknet—a part of the internet hosted within an encrypted network and accessible only through specialized anonymity-providing tools—claimed the extortionist held 1 terabyte worth of Aramco data. A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes.

Aramco has been targeted before by a cyberattack. In 2012, the kingdom's oil giant found itself hit by the so-called Shamoon computer virus, which deleted hard drives and then displayed a picture of a burning American flag on computer screens. The attack forced Aramco to shut down its network and destroy over 30,000 computers.

U.S. officials later blamed that attack on Iran, whose nuclear enrichment program had just been targeted by the Stuxnet virus, likely an American and Israeli creation.

In 2017, another virus swept across the kingdom and disrupted computers at Sadara, a joint venture between Aramco and Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. Officials at the time warned it could be another version of Shamoon.

The sliver of Aramco that now trades publicly on Riyadh's Tadawul stock exchange stood at 34.90 riyals a share, or $9.30, after trading stopped last week for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. That puts the company's valuation at around $1.8 trillion, making it one of the world's most-valued companies.