The UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) was hit by a cyberattack late last week, knocking out many of its online services. Based in London, the UN International Maritime Organization is responsible for regulating and ensuring the safety of global shipping.
According to a tweet shared by the IMO last Wednesday, its site was experiencing some technical issues, while a day later, the organization admitted that these issues had been caused by malicious actors who carried out a cyberattack against it.
Furthermore, in a more detailed statement issued on Friday about the security incident, the UN International Maritime Organization said that its Global Integrated Shipping Information Systems (GISIS) database , its IMODOCS document repository and its “Virtual Publications” service were affected by the cyberattack, but clarified that these issues have now been remedied.
The IMO also said that other "anonymous" online services affected by the cyberattack will be restored as soon as possible and in the safest possible manner.
Specifically, the UN International Maritime Organization pointed out in its relevant statement the following: “The disruption of online services was caused by a sophisticated cyber-attack targeting the organization’s IT systems that exceeded existing security measures. IMO has ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification for its system , and was the first UN organization to receive this certification in 2015. servers IMO’s headquarters file United Kingdom, with extensive backup systems in Geneva. The backup and restore system is regularly tested. Following the attack, the secretariat shut down key systems to prevent further damage from the cyber-attack.”
The organization added that email and virtual meeting platforms were not affected by the incident. The incident resembles a ransomware attack. Last week, it was revealed that French shipping giant CMA CGM suffered such an outage after a breach at its Chinese offices affected the availability of some servers and applications.
