Thursday, July 26, 2018

Another Container Shipping Giant Falls Foul of Cyber Attack

After NotPetya Maersk Case US Operations for Chinese Line Affected
Shipping News Feature
CHINA – US – Chinese container shipping giant Cosco has reportedly been hit by a cyber-attack affecting the company's operations in the US, leading Cosco US to shut down its connections with its other regions as a safety precaution. Though the shipper provided very little information in regards to the situation, Cosco released a statement informing customers of a 'local network breakdown' within its American region.

Cosco said that its local electronic communications were affected, and in halting the connections with other regions, the company is now able to further investigate the problem. The attack is reported to be ransomware, but fortunately for Cosco, it seems to be more limited than the severe attack rival Maersk faced last year, when the Danish giant found several of its operations around the world to be infected with the NotPetya ransomware, forcing Maersk to suspend operations as it required the reinstallation of 4,000 servers, 45,000 computers and 2,500 applications, causing congestion at a number of ports worldwide, and resulting in business losses in excess of $300 million.

Maersk were not the single intended target of the virus with the NotPetya attack affecting around 2,000 organisations across 65 countries causing an estimated economic loss overall of between $2.5 billion and $3 billion. FedEx also found its systems infected, resulting in $300 million in lost business and clean-up costs. In assuring customers of the limited extent of the outage, Cosco explained:

“So far, all the vessels of our company are operating as normal, and our main business operation systems are performing stably. We are glad to inform you that we have taken effective measures. Except for [America] region affected by the network problem, the business operation within all other regions will be recovered very soon. The business operations in the affected regions are still being carried out, and we are trying best to make a full and quick recovery.”