Theft of Petrobras data in Brazil may be espionage

Theft of Petrobras data in Brazil may be espionage

uk.reuters.com

On Thursday, Petrobras confirmed that four laptops and two RAM memory chips were stolen in late January from a transport container owned by the U.S. oil-field service company Halliburton (HAL.N: Quote, Profile, Research), a longtime Petrobras business partner.

Halliburton declined to comment, referring inquiries to Petrobras. Petrobras has not specified the nature of the data that was stolen, other than to say that it was "important."

But Brazil's Federal Police, which is investigating the theft, said on Friday that the data came from a drilling ship in the Santos basin, where the recently discovered Tupi field is located.

Siqueira, a former exploration and production engineer at Petrobras, said that 30 years of company research worth up to $2 billion have ended up in unknown hands.

"This is data detailing the total composition of the field, which allows you to know exactly where to drill," he said. "Whoever obtains this data will get enough strategic information for future exploration and drilling in the area."

(visit the link for the full news article)

There was a thread on ATS about the information being stolen, but this story went unreported regarding the espionage. Interesting that Haliburton was the courier of the data.

uk.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

On Feb 28th the Federal Police arrested 4 security personnel for the theft of the computers.

The police discovered that those 4 individuals have been robbing electronic devices since last year, and were finally caught.

They were found with the laptops and did not know what was inside (the info).

So, the possibility of espionage has been officially dismissed after this.

source (only in portuguese, sorry): g1.globo.com...


Peace

reply to post by Sator


Hey quazga. I reported similar news back in Feb. Whether it is debunked or not I have no idea as I don't speak Portugese. I wish people would translate if they are going to post "proof" in another language.
Petrobras data stolen

All right, Palehorse...
Now please DO NOT take this as rudeness but, it's very easy to say "I wish people would translate for me" and not going after yourself.

I understand the difficulty of translating from portuguese, but you must also realize that it may be very difficult for us (not native-english speakers) to lurk around here for some "answers".

I have followed some of your posts and threads in the past and I have liked many of them, you seem to be a nice guy in "the search" as many around here, and I am sorry to take you as an example in this case, but it seems to me that SOME PEOPLE are always expecting the answers for many "truths" to fall onto their laps, which will never happen actually.

Having that in mind, I will translate the part of the article which may end the discussion about espionage, but I would also like to ask people (specially those who only speak/read in english): do not stop when you face a language barrier.

Deny ignorance, right? So let's do that for the languages also.


Peace

A Polícia Federal descartou a hipótese de espionagem industrial no furto de equipamentos contendo informações sigilosas da Petrobras depois de prender quatro pessoas no Rio.

Segundo a Polícia Federal, os presos são vigilantes da empresa Bric Log, e desconheciam o conteúdo dos laptops. Ainda de acordo com a PF, eles praticavam furtos do gênero desde setembro do ano passado.

The Federal Police dismissed the hypothesis of industrial espionage involving the theft of equipment containing secret information of Petrobas after arresting four people in Rio.

According to the Federal Police, the arrested people are security officers from the Bric Log company, and they did not know what was inside the laptops. Still, according to the police, they were involved in thefts like this since September last year.