Carnival, the world's largest cruise operator, has revealed that it has been affected by a massive ransomware attack that could have led to the theft of customer data by hackers. The company, which receives about 13 million customers each year, said one of its brands was hit by an attack on August 15. The attack on the as-yet-unknown brand likely included what Carnival called "unauthorized access to customer and employee personal data" and may have affected some of its other brands as well.
Carnival Cruises ransomware
“On August 15, 2020, Carnival Corporation and Carnival plc (together the “Company”, “we”, “us” or “our”) detected a ransomware attack that accessed and encrypted parts of a company's computer systems . Brand. The unauthorized access also included downloading some of our data files,” the company said in its Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The file does not mention any specific type of ransomware or the actions taken by the company. However, he noted that Carnival expected "potential complaints from guests, employees, shareholders or regulatory agencies." Carnival employs more than 150.000 workers worldwide and owns a number of shipping brands including Cunard, AIDA, P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Costa, Holland American Line, as well as luxury cruise line. High end Seabourn. The attack comes shortly after the company exposed a data breach in March 2020 that resulted in a leak of personal customer information, including payment information, online. The cruise industry has already been decimated by the global coronavirus pandemic, and Carnival hopes the fallout from that incident won't hit it too hard. “The travel industry is an extremely attractive target for cybercriminals, as they can collect and store personally identifiable information (PII) from billions of passengers each year, including passport numbers, credit card information, travel addresses, etc. email and more,” noted Anurag Kahol, CTO, Bitglass. “To thwart ransomware attacks and mitigate their impact, all organizations need advanced threat protection. Organizations must take advantage of security solutions that can identify and remediate known and zero-day threats to any application or cloud service, and protect managed and unmanaged devices that access corporate resources and data. This includes solutions that can automatically block malware in the cloud that is at rest or in transit. " "In addition, organizations should provide adequate security training to employees to identify phishing attempts and illegitimate emails, as phishing is the main vector of ransomware attacks. Via Reuters