In the maritime domain, different categories of autonomous systems exist or are expected to emerge, including UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), USVs (Unmanned Surface Vehicles), and UUVs (Unmanned Underwater Vehicles).

Today, the relatively low cost (a few tens of euros for a basic receiver), the miniaturization of hardware, and the widespread availability of GPS receivers have led many to assume that this global infrastructure will always be available. These advantages have also enabled the rapid expansion of GPS usage across many sectors where it was previously absent: healthcare, pet tracking, sports, agriculture, domestic robotics such as lawn mowers, photography, and even port cranes (see also this article). As a result, it is now difficult to estimate how many GPS receivers are currently deployed worldwide.

For vessels, these scenarios may include:

• attempts to spoof or jam positioning or communication systems, either directly targeting the vessel or affecting its surrounding environment
• malfunctions or loss of availability of ECDIS navigation systems, even though these systems are often deployed with redundancy
• the transmission of false safety information to vessels (GMDSS alerts, AIS data, weather information, etc.)
• intrusions targeting onboard industrial control systems, including propulsion, navigation, or cargo management systems
• the remote takeover of a vessel or part of its systems
• the partial or complete encryption of onboard information systems through ransomware attacks

Ports are also exposed to similar risks, including:

This has always surprised me, but relatively few people are actually familiar with the field of submarine cables. I am not only referring to the technology itself, but it is quite surprising to realize that some people are not even aware of their existence. It must be said that, lying deep on the ocean floor, it is tempting to forget about them. Yet they handle 98% of intercontinental telephone communications and data transfers every day. Without them, our daily lives and our economy would be profoundly disrupted.

Intentional threat sources are broadly similar to those encountered in other sectors. Rather than reproducing a long and exhaustive list of possible threat actors, it is worth noting that the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI has already documented them in detail (see p. 15 and following pages in the reference below).

Today, the most realistic threat sources include:

• state-sponsored actors, pursuing objectives such as espionage, pre-positioning within systems, or even disruption and destruction
• “casual” hackers, inspired by demonstrations or proof-of-concept attacks presented at cybersecurity conferences and attempting to reproduce them
• competitors, a possibility that cannot be completely ruled out and should at least be considered in risk assessments
• terrorist or piracy-related organizations, which could see financial or strategic value in such attacks
• collateral infections, meaning attacks that do not specifically target the maritime sector but still affect it, as is often the case with ransomware campaigns

It is worth remembering that cyber operations have several advantages for attackers: they can often be carried out anonymously, attribution is difficult, and attacks can be launched rapidly and at relatively low cost (especially when the attacker only needs to deploy existing tools).