According to German newspaper Bild , AIDA cruise ships , including the Aidamar and Aidaperla , have been the victims of a massive cyberattack . Specifically, AIDA's operations at its port in Rostock, Germany, have been affected, with its land-based telephone and internet systems being disrupted.
The problems have forced the company to cancel a number of cruises, including New Year's Eve sailings. For now, due to the COVID-19, only these two Aida ships were scheduled to sail to the Canary Islands.
As one of the passengers stated: “We are on the fifth day of our cruise. . . The boarding pass system has stopped working. Paper vouchers are being used that would otherwise be automatically charged, for example when we bought something. We learned confidentially from the staff that there was an attack on Aida’s servers.”
The captain of the AIDAmar announced to the ship's passengers that "there were huge IT problems at the company's headquarters in Rostock. All Aida ships are affected."
Some of the crew members said that it was actually a ransomware attack that had locked down the company's systems
At least one newspaper reported that Costa Crociere, also owned by Carnival Corporation, is affected by IT problems. The blog Kreuzfahrttester reported that access to Costa's online customer portal was disrupted.
Carnival Corporation did not respond to requests for comment on the incident.
Carnival Corporation revealed late last summer that one of its subsidiaries suffered a ransomware security breach. Carnival said the incident took place on August 15. Cybercriminals reportedly gained access to the personal data of the company's guests and employees.
In March, Carnival Cruise Line announced that employees on two of its cruise ships received “deceptive emails.” Employee and customer data was reportedly compromised by phishing attacks.
A year earlier, in May 2019, Princess Cruises, owned by Carnival, detected a series of deceptive emails (phishing) sent to its employees resulting in unauthorized third-party access to certain email .
