Maritime — Cyber Threat Activity

Maritime holds no recorded incidents in our log and an actor graph of 5 groups, including APT40, Cotton Sandstorm, Sidewinder, UNC3890 and Worok, with 18 malware families linked through those actors. The sparseness is a collection limit rather than a measure of risk, since shipping lines, ports and terminal operators are frequently classified under transportation and logistics in our corpus and maritime incidents are reported into flag states and port authorities rather than published. The documented targeting is specific and strategic. Proofpoint's analysis of a Chinese-linked operator found sustained spearphishing against naval research centres, US shipbuilding companies, defence contractors and international law firms working on South China Sea disputes, using resume and research-themed lures and lookalike domains, with the selection tracking maritime geopolitics rather than commercial value. Iranian-linked operators have pursued shipping companies in the same region-driven way. The operational technology exposure is separate and serious: vessels run navigation, cargo management and engine systems that were designed for isolation and now hold satellite connectivity, while ports depend on terminal operating systems where a few hours of disruption backs up berths and landside haulage for days. Container shipping has already demonstrated that a single malware incident at one carrier can idle terminals worldwide. Read the empty count as an artefact of how maritime incidents are classified and disclosed, and the actor associations as published vendor research rather than attributions measured in our own corpus.

All sectors

Threat actors targeting Maritime

Malware used against Maritime

Families used by the threat actors that target this sector, derived from actor tooling rather than observed in these incidents directly.

Where these victims are

Recent incidents

Coverage. 94.7% of incidents in our log carry a sector classification; the remainder name a victim we have not placed in an industry. Counts here are a floor, not a total, and are not comparable between sectors of different sizes.

Read the full analysis on IntelFusions