Yesterday French shipping company CMA CGM was hit by a ransomware attack which impacted peripheral servers. This recent attack now means that all four of the biggest maritime shipping companies have experienced cyberattacks in the last four years, since 2017. On Monday CMA CGM was hit by the Ragnar Locker ransomware, which resulted in them taking down their worldwide shipping container booking system of it’s Chinese branches in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. As soon as the company became aware of the security breach external access to the application was stopped to prevent the maleware spreading.
This recent attack on CMA CGM has now created a unique situation in which an industry’s biggest companies have all consecutively become vitims of cyberattacks. The incidents started in 2017, where APM-Maersk were taken down for multiple weeks by the NotPetya ransomware. The next incident was in July 2018 when COSCO were brought down for a number of weeks by a ransomware attack. The previous incident was in April of 2020 when Mediterranean Shipping Company was targetted by an unnamed malware which closed its data center for a few days. Although all of the attacks are different, it’s a clear indicator that the maratine shipping industry are becoming a key target to cyberattacks.
