COSCO Shipping USA Inc. suffered ransomware infection

As of the afternoon of July 24, the website and toll-free number of COSCO SHIPPING in the United States were still in an unusable state. Although the Long Beach terminal was still open, no one answered.

Lee Peterson, a spokesperson for Ocean Shipping America’s Long Beach Port, said the port was testing the situation and investigating the impact of the cyber attack. Peterson quoted COSCO’s Pier J terminal operator as saying that the port’s logistics operations were not affected. He said that ships, trains, and trucks entered and exited as usual. The attack did not affect the operation of the terminal. Perhaps it was because COSCO Shipping used a separate terminal operating system. Currently, US port officials and Coast Guard are monitoring the attack and maintaining contact with COSCO Shipping.

COSCO Shipping reminds employees in other regions not to open “suspicious emails” and urges IT personnel to use anti-virus software to scan internal networks. The information posted on Facebook showed that the attack occurred on July 24, 2018, and the IT infrastructure of COSCO Ocean America was not working correctly, including email servers and telephone networks. Employees of COSCO AUUS have used Yahoo’s email account to respond to customer reports via social media.