Website of Israeli Oil Refinery Taken Offline by Pro-Iranian Attackers

UPDATE

The website of Israel's largest oil refinery was reportedly inaccessible after an Iranian hacktivist group called Cyber Avengers claimed an attack on it.

BAZAN Group, formerly known as Oil Refineries Ltd, has been inaccessible for several days, with its websites either being refused by the company's servers, or timing out requests. According to Energy Portal, the website was accessible from within Israel, indicating the possibility of a geo-block imposed by BAZAN to counter the cyberattack.

Cyber Avengers claimed responsibility for the attack, however these claims were rapidly dismissed by BAZAN Group, which told Bleeping Computer that the supposed materials were completely fabricated, and there was no truth in claims of an attack.

The screenshots appeared to be of BAZAN's SCADA systems, which are used to monitor and operate industrial control systems (ICS). The purportedly leaked information included diagrams of various systems and code for the refinery's programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which are used to physically control critical industrial equipment.

The BAZAN Group said the images have no association with the company or its assets, and while the website did briefly experience disruption during a DDoS attack, no damage was observed to the company's servers or infrastructure, and it's unclear who was behind it.

Apparently a pro-Iranian hacktivist group, Cyber Avengers stated that they breached BAZAN's network by exploiting a vulnerability in a Check Point firewall. A spokesperson for Check Point dismissed the claims, saying there isn’t any past vulnerability which had enabled such an attack.

" It’s important for us to stress that none of these claims are true, The refinery itself checked it and claimed it’s all fake, and also there isn’t any past vulnerability which enabled such an attack. The accusation made there is false," they said. "In addition, these are anti Israel hackers spreading fake pictures and statements against Israeli companies, with zero evidence just to spread rumors and noise as hacktivists often do."

This story was updated Sept. 21 to reflect the fact that researchers and the oil refining company both dismissed the claims of the group.