Saudi- Computer techs jailed for spying on Aramco 

(MENAFN - Arab News) The Summary Court in Riyadh has sentenced three Saudis to prison terms following a conviction for leaking confidential Saudi Aramco information while working for a computer maintenance company contracted by the oil company.

One employee was sentenced to six years in prison, while his two assistants were sentenced to three-year prison terms each.

According to court records, the main suspect, the computer maintenance establishment's employee, exploited the fact that he was a maintenance technician with the company contracted by Saudi Aramco. He stole hard disk drives from Saudi Aramco's computers with one containing confidential information. He also stole an external storage unit that belonged to an American engineer who works in Aramco when the maintenance worker was at the American's office to fix a computer problem.

The primary defendant was also accused of stealing a laptop that belonged to a female employee at Aramco's hospital when he entered the building to carry out maintenance work on some computers. He also had pornographic materials in violations of the law in his computers and CDs and storage units.

A CD containing a program enabling users to hack password-protected computers was also found in his possession. The program erased the password and replaced it with a new one defined by the user. He was also accused of facilitating a person's unauthorized entry into Aramco premises. The second defendant was accused of being an accomplice in stealing a hard drive from an office in Aramco and assisting in bringing the item out of the company's premises. He was also accused of entering restricted areas without authorization using the nature of work of the first suspect. He was also willing to look for parties to buy the items the first suspect stole.

The third defendant was accused of possession of CDs and storage units containing materials violating public order and public morals that are against the state, including slander against the country's scholars and praising the vandalism acts that took place in Qatif. The suspects were arrested when the police discovered that the first suspect replaced the hard drives of several Aramco employees' computers and took the originals that contained important and confidential information related to the company. The second suspect was arrested when an external storage unit in his possession was found to be the one that belonged to an American employee of Aramco.

The current case has no connection with last August's incident in which hackers disabled 30,000 Saudi Aramco workstations.