“Upon investigating the cause, we held a meeting with the Nagoya Port Operation Association Terminal Committee, which operates the system, and the Aichi Prefectural Police Headquarters, it was discovered that the issue was a ransomware infection,” Nagoya port said in the notice.
Toyota Motor shipments impacted
Automaker Toyota Motor is among the companies that use the port for several of its shipments. The automaker on Tuesday said the attack on the port would not affect the shipment of its new cars. However, imported and exported parts could not be loaded, according to Bloomberg.
The Nagoya Port is situated at the innermost edge of Ise Bay, located at the center of the Japanese Archipelago on the east coast facing the Pacific Ocean. The port has been operational since 1907.
The Port is an integrated international port, handling all types of cargo. According to its website, it is the largest port in Japan in terms of total cargo throughput, which reached 177.79 million tons in 2021. It is the largest automobile exporting port in Japan, shipping approximately 1.17 million completed automobiles annually. The port of Nagoya is connected to approximately 170 countries around the world.
Increasing attacks on ports
Ports and other important transportation and logistics assets are exceptionally vulnerable to disruption by threat actors. Financially-motivated criminals and nation-state attackers both recognize how critical these facilities are and the opportunity they represent to cause cascading effects across multiple downstream organizations.
“For criminals that means targets are more likely to pay quickly. For nation-states that means the blow of an attack is that much more visible,” John Hultquist, chief analyst at Mandiant Intelligence — Google Cloud, said in an email statement.
