Maritime and port cybersecurity.

This article is also available in French.

The Digital Forensics and Cybersecurity Center of the Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) and the Estonian Maritime Academy have received nearly €2.5 million in funding from the European Union to establish a maritime cybersecurity center.

Dan Heering, one of the project leaders at the Estonian Maritime Academy, explains that “the maritime industry has never really taken cybersecurity seriously, and there is still a great deal of work to be done in this area. Because there is very little publicly available information about successful cyberattacks or incidents involving ships, shipowners often underestimate the threat.”

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This article lists nearly 80 public incidents that have affected the maritime sector, deliberately or otherwise, over the past twenty years. It is not intended to be exhaustive, but please let me know if you are aware of other public and corroborated cases. The aim is not to single out a company or a state, but to raise awareness of incidents that have already occurred and, when known, their consequences. I will add more over time. As always, attribution and sources should be treated with caution, as should the apparent increase in the public number of incidents. I am also gradually adding submarine cable outages.

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According to ZDNet and Ilna News, Iranian officials acknowledged last Sunday that a limited number of computers were affected following a cyberattack targeting the port of Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz. ZDNet even reported that port operations were temporarily halted on Friday.

Beyond these official statements, very few details about the incident have been disclosed.

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The U.S. administration has issued a maritime advisory for vessels transiting the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. Among the risks identified are GPS interference (jamming or spoofing), as well as intrusion, jamming, and impersonation in VHF communications with ships. In some cases, vessels have reportedly impersonated U.S. or coalition ships over the radio.

Since May 2019, the U.S. authorities have recorded numerous unlawful activities in the region. In two of those cases, GPS interference occurred at the same time as other suspicious events.

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In a press release, the insurer Willis Towers Watson announced the launch of a new insurance product specifically designed to cover cybersecurity risks in the maritime sector. The objective of this product is to address the incomplete coverage of cyber risks in most traditional insurance policies and to respond to the growing number of cyber incidents affecting the maritime industry.

The policy reportedly covers several situations, including: crisis management in the event of ransomware attacks, data theft, incidents involving third parties, loss of connectivity following attacks on satellite communication links, as well as cases related to GDPR and the NIS Directive.

This article is also available in French.

A recent security advisory from the U.S. Coast Guard provides interesting details about a cyber incident that occurred in February 2019 aboard a deep-draft vessel (no further details were provided). The vessel, which was sailing on an international route bound for the Port of New York and New Jersey, notified the Coast Guard that it was experiencing a significant cyber incident affecting its onboard IT network.