Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk has confirmed a cybersecurity breach involving an older IT system inherited through a previous acquisition, raising fresh concerns over cyber threats facing the global shipping and logistics industry.
The company said on Wednesday that hackers had gained access to the legacy system and extracted data. Maersk’s cybersecurity team launched an investigation after detecting the intrusion and has taken steps to secure the affected system.
“Our findings so far strongly suggest no sensitive data has been disclosed,” the company said.
Maersk said the incident appeared to be limited to the legacy system, with no indication that its wider IT infrastructure or systems belonging to customers and partners had been affected. It also reported no evidence of compromise involving platforms connected through application programming interfaces (APIs) and electronic data interchange (EDI).
The company does not expect any disruption to customer operations, adding that its digital booking and shipment management platforms continue to function normally.
Maersk has not identified the acquired business associated with the affected system, disclosed the nature of the extracted data or named the perpetrators.
The disclosure comes amid separate claims by a hacking group calling itself WhiteArmor, which reportedly said it had stolen approximately 100 GB of logistics data from a platform associated with LF Logistics, the Hong Kong-based logistics company acquired by Maersk for $3.6 billion in 2022.
The group has reportedly demanded $5 million in Bitcoin. However, these claims remain unverified, and Maersk has not established any connection between the alleged data theft and the cybersecurity incident currently under investigation.
The latest incident has revived memories of the devastating NotPetya cyberattack in June 2017, which crippled Maersk’s global IT infrastructure and disrupted container shipping, port terminals and logistics operations worldwide.
Maersk subsequently estimated the financial impact of the attack at between $250 million and $300 million, making it one of the most costly cyber incidents in the history of the shipping industry.
The latest breach once again highlights the cybersecurity challenges facing major shipping and logistics companies as their operations increasingly depend on interconnected digital platforms, data-sharing systems and global IT networks.