DP World's Sydney terminal was affected by the cyber attackA cyber attack on DP World’s Australian operations, which handles 40% of the country’s maritime freight, has disrupted goods moving through Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Fremantle.
The attack in the evening of 10 November caused a backlog of 30,000 shipping containers at the ports over the course of the weekend, according to a Blooomberg report.
While ships were able to unload freight, the goods could not leave the port sites.
Australian Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil described the incident as “serious and ongoing” on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Australia’s National Road Transport Association said operators scheduled to move freight to or from the company’s ports had received messages over the weekend that Monday’s slots were cancelled.
“It’s frustrating but there’s nothing operators can do until the company restores its systems,” association chief executive officer Warren Clark said in a statement.
“There will obviously be some prioritisation for critical freight such as medical supplies but everybody is in limbo right now.”
DP World executive vice president for Oceania Nicolaj Noes told the Australian Financial Review the company was checking its servers to try to track where the hackers had been.
Noes told the paper it was possible the firm’s monitoring software shut down systems before data was compromised.