London port cyber attack

The 23 May attack is thought to have been carried out by the Altahrea Team hacking gang and appears to be politically motivated, according to security researchers.

The port authority’s website was knocked offline by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack but operational services are reported as working normally.

Dr Kemedi Moara-Nkwe, Research Fellow, Maritime Cyber Threats Research Group, University of Plymouth believes that attackers are increasingly targeting ports and vessels. “The maritime industry handles a very large proportion of the goods that are traded in, and out of, the UK and so any disruption to operations at a major port has the potential to cause long-lasting disruptions which could take long periods of time to resolve,” he said.

“It is therefore critical for any major port which may be facing disruption to any of its services due to a cyber-attack to act quickly to mitigate the potential impacts that the attack may cause on its own operations, other stakeholders in the supply chain and the maritime sector as a whole.

“This should involve, among other things, engaging the National Cyber Security Centre – which acts as the UK’s designated computer system incident response team for the UK’s critical industries.

“The NCSC can then, if they deem appropriate, act to both assist the port in the attack recovery process and also act to warn other UK ports of potential risks of this attack spilling over to them.

“If the port authority has officially been designated as a provider of an essential service or an operator of critical infrastructure, then the Network and Information Systems incident reporting regulations compel the port to undertake the above action,” he added.