Wavelength Plus: A podcast by TradeWinds
A shipping cyber-attack or disinformation campaign
In August a fully laden VLCC ( a supertanker for the non shipping folk reading this) arrived off the US East coast and found itself being boarded by US coastguard officials and FBI investigators. They boarded because they suspected the vessel had been subject to a potential major cyber hack that that rendered parts of its engine or machinery inoperative. The general media only heard about this in September, but the news of the hack had reached TradeWinds in early August by someone claiming to be a crew member. So this is the story of this hack which may have not have been a hack. The complete silence of the shipowner and manager and how this may have emboldened the emailers/hackers to make claims about their hacking capabilities that were just on the right side of being unbelievable to be plausible. It was one of two similar emails TradeWinds received from different ships at around the same time. TradeWinds then spoke to Lars Benjamin Vold, head of Norma Cyber (the Nordic Cyber Resiliance Centre) about the emails received and the likelyhood of a laden tanker being hacked in the way described and posing a huge risk to the ships crew and the environment. This podcast includes the use of AI generated audio to represent the voices of the email senders. Reporting, host and production: Craig Eason A TradeWinds/DN Media podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
