Why are hackers targeting global shipping?

The maritime sector is learning in real time that keyboard-driven disruption can bottleneck steel and diesel. As ships, ports and cargo systems get more connected, the cost of a single breach is no longer an IT line item but a trade shock that ripples through freight rates, insurance, working capital and policy risk.

The headline numbers tell the story. A joint study by law firm HFW and cyber firm CyberOwl found the average cost of a maritime cyber incident jumped from 182,000 dollars in 2022 to 550,000 dollars in 2023, while ransom payments where paid averaged 3.2 million dollars. That is a steep change in unit economics even before you add schedule slippage, idle assets and reputational hits with counterparties.

Attack frequency is climbing as well. Research compiled by the Maritime IT Security group at NHL Stenden shows the incident count ballooning in recent years, a pattern widely reported in the trade press and mainstream outlets. Their open maritime cyber attack database and coverage citing it both point to sustained growth, not a one-off spike.

Threat actors range from criminal syndicates to state-linked groups. Shipping has been described as a top global target for cyber criminals, with current reporting highlighting business email compromise and man-in-the-middle fraud that has ensnared cargo owners and carriers, including cases involving Nigerian organised criminal groups. The mix of fraud and ransomware reflects a simple calculus by attackers. Ships and ports sit on time-critical flows of money and goods. That creates leverage.

Statecraft is part of the risk map. GPS jamming and spoofing have stepped from theory to day-to-day hazard. The MSC Antonia grounding near Jeddah in May 2025 was attributed by several analysts to GPS interference, a case that concentrated minds across bridge teams and war-risk committees. In northern Europe, officials have on multiple occasions tied Baltic navigation interference to Russia, underscoring how electronic warfare can spill into commercial lanes.

Connectivity is the other accelerant. Low-Earth orbit links such as Starlink have transformed crew welfare and operational data flows at sea. They also broaden the attack surface, as industry analyses and mariner studies warn. The risks are not abstract. A recent US Navy case saw senior enlisted leaders punished for secretly installing an unauthorized Starlink system on a deployed warship, an anecdote that illustrates how convenience can override policy and expose assets. Commercial shipping faces the same human factor every day.

Why this matters for capital is straightforward. More than 80 percent of world trade by volume moves by sea. When a terminal loses its gate systems, when a carrier’s documentation platform is locked, or when a ship’s navigation inputs are manipulated, containers do not move and demurrage clocks do not stop. That translates directly into higher working capital needs for shippers, higher operating costs for carriers, and higher risk loads for insurers and lenders.

The structure of the fleet magnifies the challenge. As of early 2024 the average ship age by vessel count was about 22 years. Retrofitting older bridges, engine rooms and corporate networks to segregate critical control systems from admin IT is costly, requires yard time and specialist skills, and often competes with decarbonisation capex. Age is not destiny, yet it sets a realistic baseline for how quickly the risk curve can bend.

Regulatory guardrails are stiffening. The International Maritime Organization requires cyber risk to be addressed within each company’s safety management system, a mandate tied to annual verification since 2021. Classification societies have added teeth through IACS Unified Requirements E26 and E27, in force for newbuilds contracted from July 2024, which hard-wire cyber resilience into ship systems and onboard equipment. These steps do not eliminate risk, but they standardise expectations and give boards firmer ground to push vendors and managers toward security by design.

From a P&L point of view, think in three channels. First is direct cost intensity per incident, which has clearly risen. Second is the duration of disruption. Cyber events often degrade operations in non-linear ways, for example by freezing a terminal’s gate for days or forcing manual documentation workarounds that tie up berths and trucks long after systems come back. Third is the insurance and financing response, where underwriters and lenders reprice cyber sublimits, deductibles and covenants as loss data matures. That repricing is already visible in market commentary and risk surveys across shipping and ports.

Now anchor those channels in trade flow reality. The Houthis’ kinetic campaign in the Red Sea drew attention to chokepoint exposure, yet cyber tools can achieve similar disruption without the political cost of a missile strike. A ransomware hit that idles a top five Red Sea terminal ahead of peak season would quickly echo into rate volatility on Asia–Europe lanes, warehouse capacity in Europe’s hinterlands, and cash buffers for mid-market exporters with thin liquidity. Cyber is not a separate category from geopolitics. It is one of its cheaper, more deniable instruments.

Boards and operators should plan for a persistent maritime cyber attacks risk premium. For shipowners, that means building cyber into vessel economics the same way you model scrubbers, CII and new fuel options. For ports, it means treating terminal operating systems and gate stacks as critical infrastructure with layered redundancy and rapid failover to manual modes that crews actually practice, not just document. For cargo owners, it means mapping alternate routings and forwarder dependencies, holding a buffer of primitive tools that bypass locked systems, and aligning trade credit insurance with cyber exclusions that can bite during a claim.

This is also a policy and market structure issue. Governments will be asked to co-fund exercises, minimum reporting regimes and sector-wide information sharing. They will also be asked to clarify where cyber incidents cross the threshold into sanctions, export controls or war-risk definitions. Industry groups such as the International Chamber of Shipping have already expanded their guidance to reflect cyber threats alongside piracy, terrorism and physical security. Expect more standard-setting and more auditing against those standards.

For investors, the signal is to watch three early indicators. The first is the cadence of reported maritime incidents in the NHL Stenden database and similar trackers. The second is the trajectory of average loss figures and ransom dynamics in HFW and insurer reports. The third is evidence of operational knock-on effects such as elevated schedule unreliability or abnormal dwell times at specific gateways after a cyber event. Those three series will show whether the risk premium is peaking or consolidating.

There is upside in getting ahead. Carriers and terminals that can demonstrate segmentation between operational technology and IT, routine tabletop drills that pull in vendors and pilots, and clean third-party assurance against IACS and IMO expectations will find cheaper insurance and tighter credit spreads than peers who treat cyber as a compliance tick box. That advantage will matter when the next disruption coincides with a freight downturn, or when lenders narrow appetites for older assets that combine higher carbon and higher cyber exposure.

The sector cannot password its way out of geopolitics. It can, however, make breaches rarer, shorten the operational half-life of the ones that land, and prove to capital that resilience is a measurable asset. The maritime cyber attacks risk premium will be with us for years, so the question is whether you collect it as a cost of doing business or harvest it as a competitive edge.