US Coast Guard and FBI personnel boarded two commercial vessels bound for the United States in the Gulf of Mexico last month after indications that hackers had broken into their computer networks, the agencies said on Thursday.
Corey Ranslem, CEO of maritime security group Dryad Global, said that his firm had confirmed that one of the ships was the Liberian-flagged VL Prosperity. Liberia’s flag registry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FBI said a joint Coast Guard-FBI team boarded the vessels after receiving “indications that the networks of both vessels were compromised. The Coast Guard, which referred only to the August 21 boarding, said that “foreign cyber actors” were involved but did not identify them. The vessel is currently anchored in waters around Galveston in Texas, according to LSEG and MarineTraffic ship tracking data. a ship-centered cyberattack is not that difficult to pull off, Ranslem said Although dramatic in its effects. “We are expecting these types of attacks to continue and will expand in the very near future,” he said.
