News / HMM suffers security breach and cyber-attack on its email systems

Yet another ocean carrier has fallen foul to a cyber-attack: this time it is South Korea’s HMM, which today confirmed a virus attack on its email system on 12 June.

“An unidentified security breach was detected, which led to limited access to the email Outlook system in certain areas,” said HMM.

It said that by yesterday, “most of the confirmed damage” had been restored and that no data leakage had been found.

However, it said that as of today, the email servers in all areas except the America and Europe “remain impacted”.

The carrier recommended shippers in the regions still affected contact their local HMM agency offices via telephone for bookings and other enquiries.

“Except for email, systems and functions are fully operational, attributed to the independent cloud-based system,” confirmed HMM. “The email system is gradually resuming and our IT planning team is continuing the investigation to prevent further security accidents.”

The carrier added that it would “conduct enhanced security checks and take protective measures”.

A contact at HMM Europe confirmed to The Loadstar this morning that its core systems were “totally unaffected”, and that apart from “some patchy email server issues”, the attack had had “no impact on taking bookings”.

“Our emails are essentially all restored and working for our part in Europe. Not nice, but our cyber-resilience seems good so far,” he said.