Maersk Line Oceania managing director Gerard Morrison confirmed to DIESELtalk this morning that a cyberattack is affecting some of the company’s IT systems in multiple sites around the globe.
Speaking from Sydney, Australia where he was working through the night Morrison says the safety of Maersk Line’s employees, operations, and customer business is “our top priority.”
“We will update everyone on the situation as soon as we can, that is all I can say to you at this point,” says Morrison.
He refused to elaborate on any further detail to DIESELtalk about the effect on local operations, other than saying the Maersk Line team apologises for any inconvenience caused.
According to the global media, the ransomware attack is similar to the WannaCry virus and is spreading around the world.
It’s hitting port operators in New York, and Rotterdam and Maersk are among those reporting the hacking of its IT systems.
More than 80 companies in Russia and Ukraine were initially affected by the Petya virus that disabled computers yesterday and told users to pay US$300 in digital currency to unlock them, Bloomberg reports.
About 2000 users have been attacked so far, according to Kaspersky Lab analysts, with organisations in Russia and the Ukraine the most affected.
Kremlin-controlled Rosneft, Russia’s largest crude producer, said in a statement that it avoided “serious consequences” from the “hacker attack” by switching to “a backup system for managing production processes.”
The attack has quickly spread from Russia and the Ukraine, through Europe and into the US.
Maersk is the world’s largest container line operator, says its customers can’t use online booking tools and its internal systems are down.
The attack is affecting multiple sites and units, which include a major port operator and an oil and gas producer, says Maersk spokeswoman Concepcion Boo Arias.
APM Terminals, owned by Maersk, is experiencing system issues at multiple terminals, including the Port of New York and New Jersey, the largest port on the US East Coast, and Rotterdam in The Netherlands, Europe’s largest harbour.
APM Terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey will be closed for the rest of the day “due to the extent of the system impact,” the port says.
French automotive glazing manufacturer Cie de Saint-Gobain says its systems have also been infected and the French national railway system, the SNCF, was also affected, according to Le Parisien.
The strikes follow the global ransomware assault involving the WannaCry virus that affected hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries as extortionists demanded $300 in Bitcoin from victims.
Ransomware attacks have been soaring and the number of such incidents increased by 50% in 2016, according to Verizon Communications Inc.
Analysts at Symantec Corp say the new virus, called Petya, uses an exploit called EternalBlue to spread, much like WannaCry. EternalBlue works on vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system.
The new virus has a fake Microsoft digital signature appended to it and the attack is spreading to many countries, Costin Raiu, director of the global research and analysis team at Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, says on Twitter.
