Quoting: "They’d board a vessel, locate by bar code specific sought-after crates containing valuables, steal the contents of that crate—and that crate only—and then depart the vessel without further incident."
You can download the Verizon report (that is the source for this article) here: http://www.verizonenterprise.com/resources/reports/rp_data-b...
From reading the report it seems they confused container numbers with crate bar codes.
This bit: "They’d board a vessel, locate by bar code specific sought-after crates containing valuables, steal the contents of that crate—and that crate only—and then depart the vessel without further incident."
When you board a vessel with container numbers, you don't see crates. However, you can find the container then search through the container and determine the crate. But the crate bar code? That's incorrect. A bill of lading will show the crate contents as well as its container number. It does NOT contain a bar code.
The PDF is obviously a marketing piece; it is not surprising some details are incorrect.
If you ignore the bar code part, then yeah, if the target was a shipping company then you could determine the contents of containers within reach and what is in them. Still need to go through the container though.
Or just get a few men to throw overboard anything you're not interested in. A pirate has no obligation to leave his crime scene well-organized.
"Hacking" might not be an appropriate term here though. Most shipping website security is beyond awful. I've used Selenium to pull stuff off of shipping sites before as APIs are almost non-existent. When they do exist, they return fixed length text that you have to decode or you're using something archaic like automated email replies when you email a container number to them. (I have sent thousands of emails in a five minute period to a single VOCC to figure out if they were actually the ones shipping something and where the cargo is.) Lastly I've actually sent emails to website support on tracking sites telling them they weren't sanitizing inputs at all. Zero interest or chest pounding brush off reply.
As for barcodes, they probably mean shipping container number (ISO 6346 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_6346).
Now all you need are pirates with a Russian Mil Mi-26 to dig for the buried treasure on the vessel while at sea (like in William Gibson's Spook Country)
That's not how freight works.
Jan 2015 saw 17 billion Air Freight Kilometers available but with utilisation running at about 46% - most routes only have freight used one way [2]
[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/11/how-apple-ships-millions...
[2] http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/Documents/economics/freight-ana...
When we ordered an iPad from Apple in 2011, it got handed to one of the big delivery companies (FedEx?) in China, then got put on a plane to the US.
- stop a truck on a highway; take the driver out of the truck; drive off.
- board a container ship; track the targeted container; steal the contents; leave with cargo in high sea.
Sources?
Here you go: https://www.google.com/search?q=highway+truck+heist
It's what comes after the crime that actually matters, and I feel like the whole 'escape with the booty' part could be much easier at sea.
1. A container shipping company does not store the bar code of crates/packages. I've easily read 100s of booking details and never seen this. At most you maybe find one booking where the customer gave too much info and the customer service person copy/pasted too much. Anyway, either the article is talking about the container number or the hacked company is a logistics company.
2. If it is a logistics company, they wouldn't know exactly where the container is on the vessel. You can ask "above/below deck", but exact details aren't normally shared. You'd need to hack two companies if the pirates behaved like the article suggests.
3. Boarding a container ship isn't that easy as a lot of them are huge.
4. A container might just be reachable. Hint: For some commodities special care is taken to ensure that the vessel crew can still reach it. It's much easier to target a container after it has left a terminal and is e.g. on a truck. Note that even with full access it is better to somehow takeover a truck than to pick it up yourself; they check and your identification (passport/drivers license) when you pick up.
At most this might be about some logistics company that uses small vessels. E.g. intra Asia trade. Any big company I would be surprised if the hackers would make sense of all the systems :-P
That said, every so often you do see news articles whereby someone within either customs or a shipping company sells the details to others. Those others then steal the goods. But not by boarding vessels though, they takeover the truck.