Cyber Attack On Ship Management Operating Technology

Uploaded on 2023-02-02 in FREE TO VIEW, BUSINESS-Services-Transport & Travel

Norwegian shipping classification society DNV has reported that ShipManager servers were victim of a ransomware cyber attack over the first weekend in January. DNV says "more than 7,000 vessels owned by 300 customers" use ShipManager, and some 1,000 ships owned by 70 customers were affected by this attack.

DNV experts shut down the servers immediately in response to the incident, after the ransomware attack forced its ShipManager software offline without a connection to on-shore servers.

The attack does not affect the vessels’ ability to operate. and all the affected vessels can still use the onboard offline functionalities of the ShipManager software, as well other systems onboard the vessels which are unaffected.

The Norwegian Police, Norwegian National Security Authority, Norwegian Data Protection Authority, and the German Cyber Security Authority were all informed of the security breach.

There's evidence that the shipping and transportation industries are becoming more popular as targets for cyber criminals, according to the XDR specialists at Trellix. In their Q3 2022 Threat Report, Trellix say that ransomware attacks against the shipping and transportation sector in the US had doubled from the second to the third quarter of 2022.

Cyber threats are not new to the wider maritime shipping and logistics industries, but the incident comes at a time when supply lines are stretched and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought greater scrutiny of such risks.

The ransomware attack on DNV is one of many to have impacted the shipping industry in recent weeks. The Port of Lisbon, the third-largest shipping port in Portugal, was the target of a LockBit ransomware attack over Christmas.

DNV: Offshore Energy: The Register: Trellix: SuppyChainBrain: Techcrunch: Bloomberg:

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