Offshore Hacking? Usually when we mention the term piracy in technological websites we mean the illegal distribution of software, movies, music and other digital content. But Verizon revealed a different piracy case, with real pirates raiding ships.
A group of hackers managed to breach the system managementof the content of a shipping company by extracting confidential information related to routes, cargo and type of ships.
The Verizon publication explains:
Instead of spending days waiting on boats, pirates began attacking boats with a highly targeted method.
Specifically, they board a boat, force the crew to be locked in the cabins for a short period of time. When the crew finally gets out of the cabins they find that the pirates hit just a few containers.
Of course, the situation is very worrying for shipping companies Companies, but there is also an encouraging fact. The publication concludes that while the group was quite creative, they were not expert hackers.
They failed to enable SSL on the web shell and so their commands were transported in plain text, which allowed the shipping company to write a protection code relatively easily. The publication also reports that the technicians have discovered numerous misleading commands.
Pirates also do not appear to have used a proxy or a VPN during these attempts, but they did the IP attacks they use at home.
But worrying is that although pirates are pioneers, the attack shows that their techniques are changing as they started using hacking.
With a little training they will also acquire the skills….