Enlarge image
Rosneft supervisory board chairman Gerhard Schröder at a press conference of the PCK refinery in Schwedt an der Oder (2018)
Photo: Patrick Pleul/ dpa
Activists from the hacker group Anonymous attacked the energy company Rosneft Germany and claimed they stole 20 terabytes of data.
According to SPIEGEL information, the Berlin public prosecutor's office has initiated proceedings because of the hacker attack and has commissioned the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) to carry out further investigations.
The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is also involved and in contact with the company.
The BSI has also issued a corresponding cyber security warning to other companies and organizations in the mineral oil industry, as the authorities informed SPIEGEL on request.
Rosneft reported the incident to the BSI itself on Friday, according to security circles.
Since the company, as an important energy supplier, is one of the facilities of the so-called »critical infrastructure«, it is legally obliged to make such a report.
In addition, the company has filed a criminal complaint with the Berlin State Criminal Police Office.
According to reports, Rosneft Germany has also called in an external IT service provider.
For safety reasons, the company is said to have taken its systems offline for the time being – but this should not restrict the operation of the pipelines and refineries.
Rosneft Germany initially did not respond to a SPIEGEL inquiry about the incident on Sunday evening.
Hacktivists from the loose Anonymous collective claimed in a blog post on Friday that they had penetrated the systems of the German subsidiary of the energy company and captured 20 terabytes of data.
According to their own statements, the activists also remotely deleted 59 Apple devices, i.e. destroyed data.
From the screenshots released by the hackers, it appears that they managed to gain administrator privileges in the company's systems.
Apparently, some of them also left behind the slogan: »Slava Ukraini«, i.e. »Glory to Ukraine« in the systems.
When asked by SPIEGEL, members of Anonymous Germany confirmed that they were behind the hack against Rosneft.
It is not their first data robbery: in the past, the loose group had attacked the computers of the former vegan cook and right-wing extremist Attila Hildmann as well as right-wing conspiracy theorists and sometimes also stole data there during attacks.
According to information from SPIEGEL, security officials consider the hacktivists' actions to be "very dangerous" given the current world situation.
The attack was far more risky than so-called DDoS attacks, which hacktivists recently used to temporarily take Russian government sites offline.
At Rosneft, the attackers penetrated deep into the systems and, in the worst case, could have caused the control functions to crash, a senior official told SPIEGEL.
According to its own statements, Rosneft Germany has been responsible for around a quarter of all crude oil imports to Germany in recent years - and has shares in three refineries.
Oil flows from western Siberia to the PCK refinery in Schwedt in Brandenburg via the “Druschba” pipeline – two other refineries in which the company has a stake are located in Karlsruhe (MiRO) and Neustadt an der Donau (Bayernoil).
The German headquarters of the Russian state-owned company is in Berlin.
The managing director of the parent company in Moscow is Igor Sechin - former deputy head of the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He is still considered one of his close confidants and by some the second most powerful man in the country.
Sechin is on the lists of sanctioned oligarchs close to Putin.
At the beginning of March, French authorities confiscated the yacht "Amore Vero", which they attribute to Sechin.
In Germany, Rosneft has recently been in the headlines mainly because of its supervisory board chairman: former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD).
hpp/rom/rol/wow