Posted on December 1, 2017 at 5:34 PM
Shipping Company Denies Hacker Ransom Request
The shipping firm, Clarkson, has confirmed that they will refuse to comply with ransom requests following major cyber-attack.
Earlier this week the giant UK shipping firm, Clarkson, revealed that it had fallen to a cyber attack which compromised its computer network. According to the London-based firm, their investigation confirmed that the responsible party gained unauthorized access after they targeted only one user account. The user account has since the security breach’s discovery been disabled. Clarkson also confirmed that since the hack, they have implemented more security protocols to prevent other security breaches from targeting the firm in the future.
While Clarkson is currently working with local authorities, including the police, to investigate the attack, they did state that some of the company’s sensitive data could become publicly accessible at the hands of the hackers. However, the company confirmed that they’ve assembled a legal team to minimize the damage once the confidential data falls into the hands of the public.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Clarkson is currently the world’s largest shipping firm.
The firm is yet to make more details regarding the hack available. However, according to Andi Case, Clarkson’s CEO, the firm will refuse to comply with the responsible hackers’ ransom demands. Case added that the firm’s clientele would be understanding when Clarkson refuses to endure further intimidation by cybercriminals. Case continued to apologize for the inconvenience of the hack.
Shipping firms have become a favorite target amongst hackers in the last year. Earlier this year, Danish shipping firm, A.P. Moller-Maersk, fell victim to the damaging Petya ransomware attack which targeted several other companies around the world.
In 2016, the Verizon RISK team published a report which confirmed that a group of pirates managed to infiltrate and hijack an unnamed shipping firm’s system. This hack allowed the pirates to compromise the cargo loads on every ship of the company.
The report added that the affected company contacted the Verizon team for help following several damaging hacks.
However, shipping companies are not the only ones taking fire. More recently, the Sacramento Regional Transit company fell victim to a ransomware attack. Following the attack, the hacker stated their ransom demands of $7000 in Bitcoin via the firm’s Facebook page. However, after the company refused, the hackers deleted over 30 million files. According to Fox News, the deleted files are currently in the process of being restored.
During 2016, a Los Angeles-based hospital agreed to a ransom total of $17,000 worth of Bitcoins, after hackers managed to access and compromise its internal network.
The popular transport company, Uber also recently, received criticism for paying a ransom of $100,000 and failing to notify its users of the security breach.
