TECHNOLOGY THREATS Ӏ SPECIAL REPORT
software and algorithms. They
are connected, by the World Wide Web, to each other, to the ships that are waiting to dock and unload, to the trucks and railcars that will receive these goods and carry them away. They are part of the Internet of Things. And so they are vulnerable.
A bad actor could bring all the
ship-to-shore cranes of a port to a stop. There are many bad actors in the cyberworld. There are ransomware attacks from criminal gangs who want money in return for restoring services. Other hacking gangs seem
to have the unofficial blessing, or even backing, of not very friendly nations. And why should such a cyber criminal stop at one port? Ship- to-shore cranes are made by only a small number of manufacturers, and they share controlling software made by an even smaller number of manufacturers; which is, therefore, common to most of them. That same single bad actor could bring all the ship-to-shore cranes of the nation to a stop.
UNDER ATTACK Far-fetched? Unlikely? Absurd?! Not at all; it has already happened. And on a scale not far short of the above scenario. In Australia, November 2023, the country’s largest port operator, DP World Australia, detected a cyberattack. It closed its port operations
at Sydney; Melbourne; and at Brisbane; and at then at Fremantle. These are Australia’s four largest ports. Cargo and containers remained stuck on the docks. 40% of the country’s container trade was affected. In response to the attack, to stop ongoing unauthorised access to its network, DP World Australia disconnected its connection to the internet. Key port operation systems, therefore, could not function; containers of goods for export at Sydney’s Port Botany piled up on the quays for two weeks or more. Commenting at the time
Australia’s cyber security coordinator, air marshal Darren Goldie, said that he “fully supports them shutting down that [internet]
system in the first instance to stop the spread of the threat actor across the systems and ultimately ensure that we have a contained cyber incident to those four locations in the country.” Media suggestions were that ‘a
foreign state actor’ was behind the attack.
It was not the first such attack.
In February 2022 several European ports were hit by a cyberattack that disrupted oil terminals. In January 2023 the Port of Lisbon, one of the most frequently used ports in Europe, was targeted by a ransomware attack. In July of that year Japan’s
largest port, Nagoya, was forced to suspend its operations following a ransomware attack. Import of car parts for manufacturers Toyota were among cargoes affected. And, as far back as 2021, the
Port of Houston, Texas, USA, a critical piece of infrastructure on the US Gulf Coast, was the subject of cyberattack, against which it successfully defended itself. Jen Easterly, director of the National Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that ‘a nation-state actor’ was behind the hack. Again, to quote from the White House: ‘The security of our critical infrastructure remains a national imperative in an increasingly complex threat environment… The increasing digital interconnectedness of our economy and supply chains have… introduced vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could have cascading impacts on America’s ports, the economy, and everyday hard-working Americans.’ So what exactly does the
Executive Order call for ports and ship-to-shore crane operators to do to counter the threat? We do not know and, even if
we did know, we could not tell you: “The specific requirements are deemed sensitive security
36 CRANES TODAY
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