Pierluigi Paganini September 23, 2018

The Port of Barcelona was hit by a cyber attack, fortunately, maritime operations had not affected.

On September 20, 2018 morning, the Port of Barcelona was hit by a cyber attack that forced the operators of the infrastructure to launch the procedure to respond to the emergency.

At the time of writing, there are no technical details about the cyber attack, the attackers hit several servers at the infrastructure, but maritime operations had not affected.

The land operations such as reception and delivery seem to haven’t suffered any problem due to the attack.

The Information Systems department promptly launched an investigation into the incident, and it is implementing additional measures to lock out the attackers and minimize the effects.

Early this morning the #PortofBarcelona suffered a cyberattack affecting a number of its servers.
Our Information Systems department is gauging the extent of the attack and implementing its contingency plans for this type of situation.

— Port of Barcelona (@PortofBarcelona) September 20, 2018

Seaside operations are not been affected and all the scheduled ship calls are operating normally.
In terms of land operations, the reception and delivery of goods are as well developing normally.

— Port of Barcelona (@PortofBarcelona) September 20, 2018

Reading the tweets published by the Port of Barcelona, experts noticed that two days before the attack the operator warned of the effects of a cyberattack on safety and security of the infrastructure.

“The SMM Maritime Industry Report (MIR)  states that 80% of the leaders in the shipping industry believe that cybersecurity is an “important” or “very important” issue, but not all ports are equally poised to deal with this kind of cyberattack. While American and Asian ports are keenly aware of this issue and allocate a significant portion of their budgets to protecting against cyberattacks, in Europe the concern with cybersecurity is more recent.” reads a blog post published by the Port of Barcellona.

“Incidents like the one with Maersk or the ones suffered by the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam in 2011 and 2013 have helped raise awareness of the importance that this issue should be given in ports, yet there is still a great deal of work to be done.”

No one is safe from a #cyberattack that puts at risk their activity and safety and that of their stakeholders. Nor even the ports. In #PierNext we review the challenges of implementing a #cybersecurity system in a port. https://t.co/oMC345Gjv8

— Port of Barcelona (@PortofBarcelona) September 18, 2018

According to the Administrator of Systems and Projects at Port of Barcelona, Cristian Medrano, who spoke days before the cyber attack, no one is immune to cyber attacks … a sinister prophecy

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Port of Barcelona, hacking)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]