Australia Ports Operator Recovers From Two-Day 'Crippling' After Cyber-Attack (bbc.com) 20
Around 40% of goods entering and leaving Australia are managed by a single ports operator. But from Friday to Monday morning, they were suffering from a cyberattack that had "crippled" their facilities in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, reports the BBC:
The outage has not affected the supply of goods to major Australian supermarkets, the BBC understands. DP World Australia, a unit of the Dubai state-owned DP World, said its ports resumed operations at 9am local time "following successful tests of key systems overnight". It added "The company expects that approximately 5,000 containers will move out of the four Australian terminals today...."
DP World said it halted internet connectivity at its ports on Friday to prevent "any ongoing unauthorised access" to its network. Going offline meant trucks had been unable to transport containers in and out of the affected sites. The resumption of service on Monday is the first step towards tackling the attack on its network. DP World said it was still in the process of investigating the disruption and guarding its systems against cyber attacks.
DP World said it halted internet connectivity at its ports on Friday to prevent "any ongoing unauthorised access" to its network. Going offline meant trucks had been unable to transport containers in and out of the affected sites. The resumption of service on Monday is the first step towards tackling the attack on its network. DP World said it was still in the process of investigating the disruption and guarding its systems against cyber attacks.
Australian ports (Score:3)
What about Darwin and Adelaide?
I have never tasted Australian Port, but I found their white wines to be inferior to the New Zealand ones.
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What about Darwin and Adelaide?
The company "DP World Australia" Doesn't own any ports in those cities. So they are unaffected.
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What about Darwin and Adelaide?
The company "DP World Australia" Doesn't own any ports in those cities.
I wouldn't expect a porn business to own any ports at all.
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I did hear the ANL Explorer got blocked from entering DP World.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/... [marinetraffic.com]
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Woody Nook Winery in Margaret River in Western Australia makes an outstanding Tawny Port. Restaurant is good as well.
Cyber-attack caused disconnection from internet? (Score:3)
“He added that the government had not yet identified the perpetrators of the cyber-attack, which caused the firm to disconnect its ports from the internet.”
Have they ever given cyber consideration not connecting their cyber port directly to the cyber internet.
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...Have they ever given cyber consideration not connecting their cyber port directly to the cyber internet.
Yeah, but how do you expect to hire any cyber professionals? They need to cyber at least 12 times a day you know.
(One would think we learned a thing or two about .cyber after the .com became the .bomb...not really it seems.)
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Have they ever given cyber consideration not connecting their cyber port directly to the cyber internet.
I'm guessing you don't understand how a port works, or how they need to work directly with logistic systems of hundreds of companies globally in real time to function. The idea that you can run a modern shipping port for a nation of 25 million people without the systems having a connection to the internet is just ignorant of what is involved.
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Should have run such vital infrastructure on a VPN running on embedded hardware at each node.
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Imagine if your bank required you to carry around dedicated hardware to use internet banking...
You're not understanding the problem. The problem is you're engaging customers. The nodes are not under your control.
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> not connecting their cyber port directly to the cyber internet.
Actually have to come in to work? Are you mad?
They should use port 22 (Score:5, Funny)
They should use port 22. That ought to make the transport of containers completely secure, provided they do not share the private key.
Segregation? (Score:4, Interesting)
Australia mostly works as a duopoly - so one with this operator running 40%, the other running (I assume) most of the rest. This is actually quite good, because each operator necessarily has to talk to hundreds of other companies to operate, and those companies only have to interface with two operators. In fact, this sort of setup is pretty common elsewhere - that is, a relatively small number of operators running several ports each.
However, if 40% of your country's entire shipping goes down like this, as a country, you've got a problem. Telling the operator to "just be better" will only go so far - they're always going to be a target, and so it's sort of inevitable this will happen again (although hopefully not as badly).
What I'm wondering is... will countries that have port operators like this (which a lot of them do) eventually start mandating that no computer system can be responsible for more than (say) 10% of national output, and so operators will need multiple computer systems in order to operate? I suppose the problem with this is that if one system is flawed, so is the other, but there's maybe some extra contractual clauses that prevent that.
I feel like we're only at the start of this sort of hacking-causing-country-level-problems, so whatever regulations or requirements there are will probably take a few more years to come, but you've got to think that governments can't really afford to have vast tracts of their country grind to a halt because of one computer system - no matter how well run it is claimed it is.
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If the ports don't get knocked out because of a cyber attack they are usually shutdown as the Dockers Union tries to extract even more money for doing f-all.
The Painters and Dockers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Ship_Painters_and_Dockers_Union] was involved in organised crime and even murder for decades before it disappeared. During WW2 the thievery and refusal to work was so bad the US Military took over ship unloading and threatened to shoot them.