Ransomware attack halts operations at a Pemex Gas Station

RRansomware has become a major threat these days with attacks growing more and more in number. Attackers target companies with malicious programs that can cripple the entire system and leave the company offline.

Pemex gas station in Mexico is a recent victim to a ransomware attack. The attack hit the computer servers and has stop operations at the gas station till further notice.

The Ransomware Attacked affected various Pemex Servers

The Attack happened early Monday. Pemex reported that they had been hit by a group called ‘Ryuk’. The group is known for targeting big companies who have an annual revenue between $500 million to $1 billion.

Various Pemex servers have been hit by the attack and the company is reportedly taking measures to fight the RYUK ransomware and gain back access to their servers.

This attack is a major setback for the company as they already have been struggling to pay back a massive debt. Other than this, they have other problems like declining of oil production and downgrade in credit ratings. The attack could not come at worse time for the company.

Pemex employees stated that work was halted on Monday because the staff could not access a range of computer systems, especially those dealing with payments.

“The servers crashed and people are not working”, said one of the employee. 

In an email, Pemex employees were asked to disconnect computer from the networks and backup all the critical information to hard drives and tapes.

In a statement, made late on Monday, Pemex said that the ransomware attack was ‘neutralized’ and only 5% of the computers were affected by it.

Operations were back to normal and oil production and storage were not affected. 

Backup & DR Protects against Ransomware

In terms of damage, Pemex got lucky. Only 5% of their systems were affected by the attack and they must use backup disaster recovery solution. Even after this, they did suffer downtime and were forced to halt operations for a limited period of time.

In other circumstances they might not have been so lucky. Their entire servers could have been crippled and would have resulted in a total wipe out of data. 

To avoid all this, a proper backup and DR plan should be setup as these attacks will continue to happen and one can never be too sure.

By leveraging a backup and DR solution, the company would be able to back up their data and recover it in a matter of minutes. They will receive a reliable ransomware protection and would not have to worry about ransomware or paying the ransom anymore.

Other than this, a DR solution will also ensure that there is only a minimal amount of downtime and that there is no disruption in operations whatsoever.

ConclusionRansomware attacks are as deadly as they sound and can potentially leave a company offline for long periods of time. Pemex Gas Station got lucky, as they suffered minimal damage, but that may not be the case always. They must adopt cloud based backups to save their data. Back up and DR is a reliable solution against ransomware which also prevents any amount of data loss and reduces downtime to as minimum as possible.