The U.S. Coast Guard on Monday issued a safety alert advising commercial vessel owners and operators to ensure that effective cybersecurity measures are in place to protect the network and important control systems on their ships.
The alert points to a February 2019 incident where a deep draft vessel bound for the Port of New York and New Jersey had its systems infected with a piece of malware that “significantly degraded the functionality of the onboard computer system.”
While the incident did not impact the ship’s essential control systems, it did highlight the lack of proper cybersecurity measures.
“It is unknown whether this vessel is representative of the current state of cybersecurity aboard deep draft vessels. However, with engines that are controlled by mouse clicks, and growing reliance on electronic charting and navigation systems, protecting these systems with proper cybersecurity measures is as essential as controlling physical access to the ship or performing routine maintenance on traditional machinery,” the Coast Guard said. “It is imperative that the maritime community adapt to changing technologies and the changing threat landscape by recognizing the need for and implementing basic cyber hygiene measures.”
The Coast Guard has advised vessel and facility operators and owners to prevent these types of incidents by segmenting their networks to make it more difficult for attackers to access critical systems and equipment, eliminate the use of the same login credentials for multiple employees and limit the privileges of users who don’t require administrator permissions, scan external media (e.g. USB drives) before plugging them into the shipboard network, install security software and keep it updated, and always patch operating ..
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