Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, has announced the restoration of its internal computer networks following a serious malware attack earlier this month. Writing in a statement yesterday, the company claimed that external internet access to workstations had been disabled "as a precaution," and emphasized that its oil production and distribution systems remained unaffected by the virus. As The New York Times points out, at least one Saudi Aramco website remains offline.

The announcement comes less than a week after the Cutting Sword of Justice — a hacktivist group which originally claimed responsibility for the breach — vowed to redouble its efforts against the company. The group, which appears to be motivated by Saudi human rights abuses at home and abroad, is thought to have orchestrated its original attack using the so-called Shamoon malware package detected earlier this month.

Writing about the original attack, a number of security researchers compared Shamoon to Flame, the virus co-developed by the United States and Israel to attack Iran's energy ministry. But, as Kaspersky Lab pointed out at the time, it "is more likely that this is a copycat, the work of script kiddies inspired by the story."