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02/03/2016

Seaborne pirates hack shipping firm to further streamline their operations


A Verizon security report sheds light on the growing technical expertise of pirates.



In what could send a chill on our collective spine, seaborne pirates who are probably not as nice as Jack Sparrow, are now getting increasingly tech savvy.
 
Borrowing a page from their land-based cousins, these rum loving sea dwellers have hacked into the Content Management System (CMS) of a shipping company to figure out which ships were worth their booty. So concludes a security report from Verizon.
 
In what is a growing sign of smartening up of their thuggery, the seaborne pirates not only know what the ships are carrying but also their exact route and location. They not only now know which route to raid but also which crate they will need to pry open without the risk of loitering about on deck and getting caught and shot to bits by coast guards and navies patrolling the high seas.
 
Luckily, for us, the pirates were newbies and don’t know yet how to encrypt their commands or use proxies to hide their tracks. Also, as per Verizon they still don’t have sufficient skill to fully compromise a system.
 
However, this should serve as a waking up call to the shipping industry.
 
If the rum-loving sea dwellers were to upgrade their technical skills it could send a ‘shiver me timbers’ chill up their collective spine as the pirates will be well-armed, with hardware and knowledge, to create havoc by plundering just about any ship they like without any fear of retribution.


Debashish Mukherjee

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