CPC Corp. Taiwan (2020) Ransomware

Victim:

CPC Corp Taiwan

Attacker/Malware:

Winnti Group’s ColdLock Ransomware

Industry:

Oil and Gas

Estimated Cost:

~$3-6M in recovery/downtime, Website offline ~1 day; ~1,000+ gas stations couldn’t process electronic payments, causing chaos (cash-only fallback). No fuel shortages or production halts; OT isolated.

Primary Attack Vector:

Suspected via spear-phishing or infected USB (unconfirmed); attackers spent weeks probing, escalating privileges to domain admin level before deployment.

Prevention Failure:

Weak Credentials

BlastWave Solution:

Network Cloaking, Passwordless Access, and Segmentation

Kill Chain Analysis:

Unspecified Operational Disruption

CPC Corp., Taiwan’s state-owned oil and gascompany, suffered a ransomware attack thatdisrupted operations attributed to a China-linkedhacking collective.

Attackers likely infiltrate via phishing, unpatchedvulnerabilities, or supply-chain compromise (e.g.,infected USB or third-party software). Data exfil-tration occurs quietly before encryption activates.Ransomware encrypts servers and endpointsaround midday; CPC’s website crashes, and gas sta-tions nationwide fail to process VIP cards or mobilepayments. CPC initially calls it a “system crash” butconfirms malware by evening.

BlastWave Prevention Analysis:

Universal OT Segmentation

For oil and gas operations, this attack underscoresthe need for continuous, universal OT segmentation.

BlastWave achieves this by segmenting all seg-ments, ensuring that ransomware cannot propagatefrom a single compromised workstation or serverto critical control systems, thereby maintainingoperational flow and preventing business-cripplingoperational disruptions caused by these generalizedransomware campaigns.

Credentials Theft should never enable access to the OT network and its systems.

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Reading about past failures is only useful if it changes future outcomes. If attackers can see your OT network, they can target it. If they can target it, compliance, safety, and uptime are already at risk.

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