Saudi Arabia just got hacked, here's what you should know

Saudi Arabia was the target of an aggressive cyberattack in November, but the kingdom just confirmed the breach on Thursday.

Here's what you should know.

The kingdom's General Authority of Civil Aviation was the main victim of the attack, with thousands of computers destroyed. Energy, manufacturing and transportation sectors were also caught in the crossfires, according to CNN.

"The attacks aimed at disabling all equipment and services that were being provided. The attackers were stealing data from the system and were planting viruses," the Saudi state news agency said.

Although the aviation agency received the brunt of the cyberattack, only office administration systems were affected. Air travel, airport operations and navigation systems continued normally, according to Bloomberg.

U.S. officials pointed fingers at Iran for the massive attack on Aramco in 2012. It was believed to be a response to Saudi efforts to interfere with Iranian systems controlling it's oil business.

Now, experts are again pointing to Iran as information unfolds. Some have said that the virus used is a variant of "Shamoon," which was used in the Aramco attack.

 Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the security firm CrowdStrike, wrote in a blog post that while the motives are "unclear" the attack coincides with "multiple geopolitical events" in the region. The attack happened ahead of the 171st meeting of the of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) conference in Vienna that led to a consensus on oil prices. 

Some have already suggested that this could effect the Iran Nuclear Deal.

"Anyone who did this attack knows it has implications for the nuclear deal,” James Lewis, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Bloomberg.

He suggested that the attack could be Iran or another country trying to frame Iran, in an effort to derail the deal. 

As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take power in January, all eyes are on him to see how he will deal with cyber security as well as existing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Although Trump took a hard stance against the nuclear agreement during his campaign, he appears to have softened his tone since the election. 

In 2012, a cyberattack on Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant Aramco destroyed 35,000 computers. It has been called the worst hack in world history.

The hack erased data on three-quarters of the companies computers and replaced everything with an image of a burning American flag, according to The New York Times. In order to counter the attack while it was happening, every office of the company was unplugged from the Internet, but the damage was already done.

It took some five months for Aramco to bring its computer networks fully back online, with significantly expanded cyber security, of course.