The unprecedented 2017 NotPetya malware attack on global shipping giant Maersk has been well documented, but according to the organization's top cybersecurity executive, several other companies suffered equally if not even more devastating damage but have yet to publicly reveal the incidents.
Speaking at Black Hat Europe 2019, A.P. Moller Maersk A/S Chief Information Security Officer Andrew Powell said he believes globally approximately 600 companies were damaged by NotPetya around the time of the Maersk attack. Powell said that's because the source of the attackswas traced back to an application called M.E.Doc, a financial application that the Ukrainian government essentially requires any company to use if it is doing business in the country.
According to published reports, NotPetya was the key element in a nation-state-sponsored cyberattack campaign targeting the government of Ukraine. Instead, the malware proved to be far more virulent.
"Any company doing business in Ukraine and filing a tax return [in 2017] was hit," Powell said. "Very big companies in the U.S. got hit hard, two of them harder than us." Powell declined to name the companies and did not elaborate on how he came to know about these other organizations' NotPetya incidents. All told, estimates indicate the attack and recovery effort have cost Maersk nearly $300 million to date.
Published reports indicate NotPetya wreaked havoc all over the globe in nearly all industries. In the U.S., pharmaceutical giant Merck and shipping giant FedEx both lost more than $300 million from NotPetya as a result of cleanup and lost business.
Powell, a longtime information security executive, previously worked as a vice president for ..
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