Dutch port movement reporting company Royal Dirkzwager is the latest shipping outfit to suffer a cyber-attack.
Following the attack on DNV in January, the Rotterdam-based company that monitors more than 200,000 ship movements a year was reportedly hit with ransomware from the Play group, also known as PlayCrypt.
Play has racked up a number of high-profile ransomware attacks since June 2022, recently exploiting a loophole in Microsoft Exchange.
Royal Dirkzwager chief executive Joan Blaas could not be immediately contacted. He is reported to have said the attack did not affect operations but involved the theft of data from servers that held contracts and personal information.
The company provides information to more than 800 organisations reporting on vessel movements, arrival times and berth details for ships in ports in the Netherlands and Belgium, plus bunker and other services.
Royal Dirkzwager, which was acquired by Dutch maritime news group ProMedia last October, has notified the Dutch Data Protection Authority.
Last week, DNV said its ShipManager servers are back online but work to resume the full scope of services continues.
Up to 1,000 ships operated by 70 companies were initially affected by the attack on the software that supports the management of vessels and fleets.
The classification society said no other onboard systems were affected, because ShipManager servers are isolated from the rest of its IT infrastructure, and the outage did not have an impact on vessels’ ability to operate, as they could still use onboard offline functionalities.
Other companies attacked recently include navigation technology group Voyager Worldwide, which has 1,000-plus shipping customers, and Danaos Management Consultants.
