Superior Plus, an Oil & Gas supplier from United States has announced that it has become a latest victim of a ransomware attack due to which the supplies of propane and related distillates from its firm will be disrupted to a certain extent.
Thus, with the latest announcement, Superior Plus becomes the second fuel supplier after Colonial Pipeline to be targeted with a group that spreads file encrypting malware.
Sources reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders state the firm noticed an intrusion into its network on December 12th,2021 and isolated those infected from the major network. And so the company has launched a detailed investigation on the issue and is in no mood to entertain the demands of the hackers.
Superior Plus that serves around 780,000 customers in US and Canada with the support of its 4,260 staff members is yet to reveal the name of the ransomware group that targeted its systems.
Historically, in May this year, Colonial Pipeline, a fuel supplying company to East of America, was hit by ransomware. Subsequently, the company’s CEO Joseph Blount made it official that his firm paid a ransom of $5 million to DarkSide Ransomware group to free up its data from encryption.
As the cyber attack was launched on the critical infrastructure, the White House took it seriously, pushing the President Joe Biden to discuss the matter with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a conference in July this year.
FBI, in association with CISA, launched a serious hunt for those spreading DarkSide Ransomware and reached to the core of the hacking group and seized their infrastructure, thus weakening their cyber existence to a certain extent thereafter.
The White House kick-started a task force that would make the government infrastructure more resilient towards state funded attacks.
Note- In November 2021, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco issued a public statement that FBI has seized over 62 BTC from the Darkside ransomware group and a recovery of 12 BTC is still needed.