PDVSA Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (PET1768583981)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the PDVSA Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. breach identified under incident ID PET1768583981.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of PDVSA Petróleos de Venezuela S.A.'s information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/petroleosdevenezuela, the number of followers: 129470, the industry type: Oil and Gas and the number of employees: 25708 employees

After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 742 and after the incident was 723 with a difference of -19 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.

In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on PDVSA Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. and their customers.

On 15 December 2023, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) disclosed Cyberattack issues under the banner "Cyberattack Paralyzes Venezuela’s Oil Giant PDVSA, Forcing Manual Operations".

A December 15 cyberattack on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), crippled its digital infrastructure, forcing employees to rely on phone calls, handwritten reports, and personal messaging apps to maintain operations.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting SCADA platform, SAP software and Internal email.

In response, and stakeholders are being briefed through Use of WhatsApp, Telegram, Gmail, phone calls, and handwritten reports.

The case underscores how Ongoing (as of late January), teams are taking away lessons such as Vulnerability of aging technological infrastructure due to underinvestment, corruption, and U.S. sanctions restricting system upgrades.

Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.

Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating disrupted critical systems, including the SCADA platform and SAP software and External Remote Services (T1133) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating aging technological infrastructure, weakened by years of underinvestment. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Service Stop (T1489) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating cyberattack has crippled its digital infrastructure, forcing manual operations and System Shutdown/Reboot (T1529) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating sCADA platform used to manage refineries, pipelines...disrupted. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating employees...rely on phone calls, handwritten reports, and personal messaging apps and Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating internal email and corporate portals offline. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol (T1048) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating personal data in person for manual processing (pension-related). Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation of Remote Services (T1210) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating sCADA platform and SAP software handling accounting, payments disrupted. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.