QCOSTARICA — Costa Rica’s oil refinery that refines nothing, the Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo (RECOPE), has been under cyberattack due to a hack on Wednesday, has had failures in its computer systems, for which it is “not willing to negotiate with criminals.”
“At this moment, forensic analyses are being carried out to determine the causes. RECOPE is not willing to negotiate with criminals, therefore, no threats or extortion will be attended to,” said the State company in a statement.
The cyberattack was reported on Wednesday, November 27, 2024, forcing the refinery to carry out operations manually.
The president of the RECOPE, Karla Montero, has said publicly that “there is no fuel shortage, but there is a slow distribution” and has taken steps to reinforce manual operations to facilitate the control of sufficient inventories to maintain the fuel supply.
When will the systems be able to be restored?
“It is not possible to estimate the duration of the incident, for that reason, we adhere to our protocols and will continue to attend to everything manually until otherwise indicated,” the RECOPE indicated.
On Thursday ships were received with various fuel types, including super gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.
“At the same time, RECOPE and Micitt (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación, Tecnología y Telecomunicaciones) continue to work together to deal with the incident,” the state-owned company said.
Apparently, the hack is by “ransomware”, a type of malware that encrypts an organization’s high-value data, such as files and documents, and then demands a ransom from the company to restore access to that data.
RECOPE asks for patience from transporters in reply to some claims that it takes 24 hours to load and unload a tanker truck.