Saudi Arabia blamed unidentified people based outside the kingdom for a cyberattack against state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co. that aimed at disrupting production from the world's largest exporter of crude.

More than 30,000 computers were compromised or affected by a so-called "spear-phishing" attack from Aug. 15, raising concerns about the threat hackers may pose to output at the company known as Saudi Aramco, Abdullah al-Saadan, vice president for corporate planning, said today at a news conference in the eastern city of Dhahran.

Major General Mansour Al-Turki, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, declined to identify any of the "several foreign countries" from which the attack originated because the investigation is still in progress. "The attack failed to reach its ultimate goal, which was to stop the flow of Saudi oil," he said at the conference.