Petro-Canada gas stations across Canada are grappling with technical difficulties preventing customers from making credit card or rewards points payments, as its parent company, Suncor Energy, reveals it has fallen victim to a cyberattack.
Suncor Energy, ranked as the 48th-largest public company globally and one of Canada’s major synthetic crude producers with an annual revenue of $31 billion, has taken measures to address the cyberattack and has informed the relevant authorities. While the company expects transactions with customers and suppliers to be adversely affected until the issue is resolved, it emphasizes that there is no evidence of customer, supplier, or employee data compromise or misuse resulting from the situation.
Suncor has not provided specific details about the nature of the cybersecurity incident, leaving uncertainties about whether it involves a ransomware attack or other forms of compromise to its systems. The company’s focus remains on resolving the incident and minimizing the impact on its operations. Meanwhile, Petro-Canada, a Suncor subsidiary operating over 1,500 gas stations across Canada, has also been affected.
Customers are unable to log in to their accounts via the app or website, causing inconvenience and preventing the accumulation of rewards points when refueling at Petro-Canada gas stations. The outage underscores the broader challenges faced by critical infrastructure entities and their customers when cyberattacks disrupt services on a significant scale.