Hackers target commercial shipping with USB sticks

Chinese computer hackers are reported to be targeting commercial shipping companies across Europe through the use of malware on US drives.

An article in SupplyChainBrain.com, citing Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, says that the infected sticks have been found on ships in Norwegian, Greek and Netherlands vessels in the last few months. It is thought that the sticks – which have been linked to the Chinese hacker group Mustang Panda – are designed to scrape sensitive information from IT networks, particular those not connected to the Internet.

The report suggests that  Mustang Panda may have handed out the sticks to unsuspecting people at maritime industry events. In April, cybersecurity firm Sekoia warned that tens of thousands of unique IP addresses were infected by a self-replicating worm – also spread by compromised USB drives – that had been traced back to Mustang Panda.