South Korea’s HMM, which is a major ocean carrier, has been hit by a virus attack. This makes yet another ocean carrier that has fallen victim to a cyber-attack in recent years.
In 2017, Maersk carrier lost $300 million after falling victim to history’s largest cyberattack with NotPetya ransomware. Then there was an attack on CosCO in 2018. In 2020, CMA CGM, a French container transportation and shipping company, disclosed a data breach after an attack with Ragnar Locker ransomware.
While the attack against Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), a security incident affected its email system:
“An unidentified security breach was detected, which led to limited access to the email Outlook system in certain areas,” said HMM.
Most of the confirmed damage caused by the incident has been restored, and no data leakage has been found, the company said. However, HMM said that email servers in all regions except the America and Europe were still affected, and did not provide further details.
All other systems and functions are fully functional. The incident is being investigated to prevent a security breach from happening again:
“Except for email, systems and functions are fully operational, attributed to the independent cloud-based system,” confirmed HMM. “The email system is gradually resuming and our IT planning team is continuing the investigation to prevent further security accidents.”
Shippers in the affected regions are asked to contact their local HMM office via telephone for further information.
Carrier assured that it would implement enhanced security checks and protective measures.
The attack did not affect HMM Europe’s core systems operations, HMM Europe confirmed. In addition, they have restored all email systems which are working in Europe:
“Our emails are essentially all restored and working for our part in Europe. Not nice, but our cyber-resilience seems good so far,” a contact at HMM Europe said.
