Seventeen hours after its IT system went down Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) finally said this afternoon that it might have been the victim of a malware attack.
The website of the world’s second largest container line went dead sometime just before midnight on Thursday with the carrier stating more than 12 hours later that it had suffered an outage at one of its data centres.
“At this point in time we cannot rule out entirely the possibility of a malware,” the company told Splash this afternoon.
“Mail services are still working and MSC has an IT infrastructure where many services are locally operated and hence it is unclear presently which exact IT tools are operational and which are not,” container shipping and cyber security expert Lars Jensen commented on LinkedIn today.
This marks the first time a top five carrier’s website has been down for such a lengthy period since Maersk was hit by a cyber attack nearly three years ago. It comes days after Diego Aponte, group president and CEO of MSC, told clients in a rare public statement that the carrier was upping its online capabilities to handle more internet business during the coronavirus lockdown.
Hi @MSCCargo – in the absence of returning emails or phone calls can you let clients know the status of yr IT systems given the website has been down for a number of hours with reports suggesting you've been hit by a cyber attack
— Sam Chambers (@SamChambers) April 10, 2020
