#Current defcon serial#

The Ever Given was not a cyber target this time but its grounding demonstrated the potential impact on global trade when a ship blocks a chokepoint. The giant ship blocked the Suez Canal for six days. With the grounding of the enormous container ship - the Ever Given - on March 23, 2021, the world was reintroduced to the issue of вЂњ maritime choke pointsвЂќ. Comparatively, according to a 2006 RAND study, the closing of the Malacca Strait would increase transit time by only an additional three days. If the canal is blocked companies must take the alternative route - around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10 to 12 days transit time, fuel costs, and security costs. Its 120-mile-long narrow transit offers the opportunity for cyber-induced disruption, particularly if one wanted to stall oil and gas deliveries to the Mediterranean and Europe. The 205-meter-wide canal is known to be challenging even at modest speeds for ships the size of the Ever Given. Ships, including the very largest container vessels, can cut an average 12 days off a three-week trip from India to Italy by transiting the canal. 30 percent of the worldвЂ™s shipping container volume carrying 12 percent of global trade passes through the canal. The Suez Canal could be one of the more lucrative cyber disruption targets due to the amount and expected speed of traffic flow through its two-lane and one-lane sections. It is worth a bad actorвЂ™s effort to experiment with grounding a major new container ship remotely from land-based cells. The massive size of modern container ships such as the Ever Given makes hacking their steering systems or forward speed a means of weaponizing the vessel. When a commercial vessel or warship is strategically delayed via sea-hacking, critical shipments are delayed by days or weeks. The vast bulk of the worldвЂ™s critical economic and military traffic passes through a handful of narrow strategic waterways known as вЂњmaritime chokepoints.вЂќ While these waterways have always been prey to pirates, weather, and maritime accidents, these perils are now joined by maritime cyber attacks - whether conducted for ransom, malicious disruption, piracy, or as part of larger geopolitical conflicts. Maritime Chokepoints Make Attractive Targets

#Current defcon serial#

Segregation of a shipвЂ™s internet protocol and serial networks can prevent this.

It was only when an information technology team came aboard to remediate that the shipвЂ™s crew regained control of the steering. The hackers compromised both steering and maneuver controls.

While the simulation used at DefCon did require вЂњplugging intoвЂќ the equipment, remote-access hacking is possible as demonstrated in February 2017, when hackers took control of a German-owned container vessel traveling from Cyprus to Djibouti. A skilled hacking team typically takes at most 14 hours to penetrate the system safeguards and remotely take control of both steering and throttle controls. The winning team had neither experience in the simulated environment or in maritime hacking in general. Importantly, the 2021 competition once more demonstrated that hacking skills from land-based systems and environments are easily transposable to a maritime environment. While this yearвЂ™s challenge required hackers to tap into propulsion, steering, and navigation systems through a wired connection to their laptops, next year the hope is to provide a wireless environment. Using realistic components and protocols, hackers were able to penetrate different maritime subsystems including navigation, firefighting, and steering systems. The simulated maritime bridge setup is meant to be an accurate facsimile of equipment typically in use onboard ocean-going vessels, allowing hacking teams to attack the afloat environment.

The conferenceвЂ™s Hack the Sea Village вЂњSeaTFвЂќ hacking challenge allowed teams of three to five individuals to gain hands-on experience hacking real maritime hardware in a controlled environment using Fathom5вЂ™s вЂњGraceвЂќ maritime cyber security testbed. From this effort came a coveted вЂњBlack BadgeвЂќ from the Maritime Hacking village of the annual cyber security conference DefCon, held in August 2021 in Las Vegas. They were in and through the navigation interface in a remarkably short time and had control of both the steering systems and the throttle in quick succession. The hackers did exactly this - surprisingly without foreknowledge of the specific systems they were to hack prior to beginning the penetration. The techniques were simple enough - penetrate the platform through the onboard navigation system and then go horizontally across the onboard networks to gain control of key systems such as steering and the throttle.