A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Hackers are pulling the strings far beyond cyberspace. A research team has uncovered details of a scam to hijack real-world cargo shipments. Here's NPR cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin.
JENNA MCLAUGHLIN, BYLINE: For many years, criminals have been stealing valuable cargo as it travels around the world. Here's Selena Larson, a threat intelligence analyst at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.
SELENA LARSON: We think about from the Old West days of the train robbers, like, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were targeting, you know, overground freight. They were targeting rail and would steal money, steal goods that were being shipped over land. And this is sort of the natural evolution of this.
MCLAUGHLIN: By the natural evolution, she means incorporating cybercrime. Now hackers are helping hijackers get a head start. Here's Ole Villadsen, another researcher at Proofpoint who said his team has been tracking cybercriminals who are breaking into freight companies.
OLE VILLADSEN: I noticed that there were some posts on Reddit that talked about a problem of having cargo stolen and then tracing that back to carriers who had compromised accounts.
MCLAUGHLIN: What he saw on Reddit matched Proofpoint's data. Cybercriminals were using companies' internal software to infiltrate their operations. The hackers would use stolen accounts to bid on cargo loads, then tip off criminals who would steal the goods. Larson says she found evidence of hijackers going after trucks full of energy drinks, for example, whose sale might be illegal in other countries. The scheme is very lucrative.
LARSON: We found that it's literally a $35 billion industry. Like, that's the estimated losses from cargo theft overall, and that dwarfs other cybercrime.
MCLAUGHLIN: More money than ransomware, even - a highly publicized kind of attack where criminals hold victims' data hostage. This cyber-enabled hijacking quite literally crosses borders between jurisdictions and countries and from the digital space to the physical. Larson says it's going to take a team effort to start to solve this problem.
LARSON: It really requires collaboration between everyone involved. And, you know, sharing information, identifying these trends, making people care about it also is going to be really important.
MCLAUGHLIN: That work is already underway. The researchers say truckers and cargo companies are becoming more aware that they could be targets of hackers now, too, along with their precious cargo.
Jenna McLaughlin, NPR News.
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