MOSCOW, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Russia's oil giant Rosneft said Tuesday that it came under a large-scale cyberattack on its servers, which has not affected its oil production due to a timely switch to a backup system.
"The cyberattack could have lead to serious consequences, but due to the fact that the company switched to a backup control system, neither the production process, nor mining and preparation of oil were stopped," the company said on Twitter.
Access to Rosneft and its subsidiary Bashneft's websites is unavailable for the moment as a result of the cyberattack.
"We hope that this has nothing to do with the current judicial procedures in any way," Rosneft said.
The company has approached law enforcement agencies over the cyberattacks, according to the tweet.
Rosneft and Bashneft were currently fighting a court case against Sistema, a conglomerate in Russia covering all kinds of sectors, accusing it of provoking the devaluation of Bashneft in the period of ownership between 2011 to 2014 before Rosneft bought the company in 2016.
A trial is expected to start on Wednesday. The initial suit for 106.6 billion rubles (1.8 billion U.S. dollars) has been increased to 170.6 billion rubles (2.9 billion dollars).
Rosneft was reportedly not the only one hit by the massive cyberattack.
Caused by an extortionary virus named "Petya", the cyberattack targeted a number of oil, telecommunications and financial companies in Russia and Ukraine, blocking computers and demanding 300 dollars in bitcoins, Group-IB, a company based in Moscow specializing in early detection of cyberthreats, told Russia's Prime news agency, an economic news subsidiary of RIA Novosti.
According to Group-IB, among the victims of cyberattacks were Bashneft, Rosneft, and the Ukrainian companies Zaporozhyeoblenergo, Dneproenergo and Dnipro Electricity System.
"The government computers of Ukraine, the Kiev subway, Auchan stores, Ukrainian telecommunications operators (Kyivstar, LifeCell, UkrTeleCom), Privatbank, Boryspil airport, presumably, also underwent a hacker attack, " a representative of Group-IB added.
An increasing number of companies are joining the victim list, according to media reports and social media posts.
