After disrupting the services of France-based CMA CGM, hackers reportedly targeted London based IMO aka International Maritime Organization, a federal organization that regulates shipping.
And because of the attack, the website of the company is down and not reachable.
The shipping related UN organization says that its internal systems and email services were restored back to normalcy after they were pushed to the database of Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISS) and Virtual publication services and IMODOCS will be soon revived.
IMO has asked the IT staff of UN Council to probe down the incident and to identify the attack and enhance security of the systems.
What’s interesting about the attack is that it just occurred two days after a cybersecurity breach occurred on the database of CMA CGM.
Note 1- Although many media sources speculate that the attack on IMO was of ransomware variant, the shipping governing agency did not confirm it. A ransomware is a kind of malware that steals a portion of data and then encrypts a database until a ransom is paid.
Note 2- IMO is an organization that takes care of safety, environmental concerns, legal matters, technical cooperation, maritime security and works towards efficacy of shipping in international waters. It has over 174 member states and 3 associate members and an assembly that governs 5 committees- namely the Maritime Safety Committee, the Maritime Environment Protection Committee, the legal committee, the Technical Co-operation Committee and the Facilitation Committee.
