Expeditors may have fallen victim to a ransomware attack

The Expeditors International, a Seattle-based logistics and freight forwarding company has been affected by a cyberattack this weekend which has forced the firm to shutdown most of its operations.

Expeditors has its branches in 350 locations with a turn over of $10 billion in gross revenue and 18,000 employees worldwide. The main services include supply chain, distribution, warehousing, logistics, transportation, compliance and customs.

The company is yet to reveal the type of cyberattack, and as per the Cybersecurity Time secondary research on the internet this is suspected to be a ransomware attack.

Detailed breakdown on Expeditors ransomware attack

Expeditors published a short notification on Sunday published a notification that their systems are facing a downtime and the operations are affected due to cyberattack. Furthermore, late at night, the company updated that they have shutdown their global operations to maintain the safety of their global environment.

“We determined that our company was the subject of a targeted cyber-attack. Upon discovering the incident, we shutdown most of our operating systems globally to manage the safety of our overall global systems environment. The situation is evolving, and we are working with global cybersecurity experts to manage the situation.

While our systems are shut down we will have limited ability to conduct operations, including but not limited to arranging for shipments of freight or managing customs and distribution activities for our customers’ shipments.” – Expeditors Statement on the Attack.

The impact on the firm is believed to be massive as it has halted operations including customs, freight, distribution and transportation completely.

Steps taken to handle the Expeditors ransomware attack

The company is working with its service providers and carriers to mitigate the situation and is planning to use the backups to restore their systems back to normal. A team of cybersecurity experts are investigating the situation and will aid Expeditors in resolving their security challenges.

As per the secondary research, it is believed that the attack could be Expeditors ransomware attack as the global systems were shutdown. Also, this is usually done when the files are encrypted, and restoring from backup is needed to resolve the situation.

The company is expected to resolve the situation, however, it can taker a while since the effect could be massive. The firm hasn’t given any date for the resolution of the same yet but said it will share updates periodically.

Subscribe to our newsletter for daily alerts on cyber events, you can also follow us on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Reddit.

You can reach out to us via Twitter/ Facebook or mail us at admin@thecybersecuritytimes.com for advertising requests.