with superyacht values often in hundreds of millions of dollars there'd be a
prize for any criminal and in the past decade piracy has seen a big resurgence
and superyacht security is more important now than ever super yup vulnerabilities can be put into two
categories really cyber security and physical security of the vessel the crew and the owner
in port anderson one of the ways a billionaire is at risk is through cyber attacks
of course they spend millions of dollars protecting themselves from these kinds of
things satellite internet providers provide strong security and they have rooms full of
people constantly monitoring the systems of vulnerabilities so one form of attack
that internet providers can't protect you from is one close to the vessel so you
you're broadcasting your wi-fi on board but it actually has a reach sometimes that goes quite far
and a guy who sat with a laptop can try and exploit vulnerabilities in the security
hackers use a technique called known as war driving where they sit in their car with a
laptop maybe maybe an antenna on the roof and they just drive around they do this in
residential areas as well not just not just around super yachts a few years ago i was at the monaco
yacht show i'm one of the tech companies this is a few tech companies within the superior industry
well-known tech companies and they did an exploit on allegedly on one of the yachts that was out
in the marina they claimed that the wi-fi was broadcasting and they could pick it up and
they demonstrated with the big screen and they showed them gain access to their wi-fi network
now i i was a bit skeptical of this because of the legalities of what they were doing uh and
the idea that this unknowing yacht is sat out there getting exploited like that i i
found that hard to believe and i feel that they probably set that up themselves but what it did do
is it it showed how it could happen and it's not limited to super yachts
imagine the scenario you go down to your local coffee shop and you order an overpriced cappuccino
and while you're there you take out your phone maybe the cellular is not so good so you hook
up to the wi-fi or what you think is their wi-fi and you could do a little bit of surfing
maybe you check some messages maybe you top up your loyalty card
to pay for your drink or you've just been hacked so hackers set up in coffee shops and what they
do is they use a laptop and they broadcast a fake hotspot in that coffee shop so when you go into
the coffee shop you take your phone out and you go to the wi-fi settings and you look for free
whatever coffee coffee house wi-fi right and you connect to it there's no password required and
you connect to it now you're surfing the internet but what happened is the hacker
is now looking at all of your data and he's using an application called the network analyzer
or more more commonly known as a packet sniffer sounds funny and he's now all of the data that
you're sending and receiving is going through his computer and through this packet sniffer
and he's able to find information that is not properly secured and he can exploit it
and it's not limited to coffee shops anywhere you go that has a wi-fi hotspot
airports libraries the mall
or even in your workplace you can be vulnerable to these signs of attacks
so you need to be vigilant you need to make sure you connect to the proper
wi-fi but even if you do you can still be vulnerable to these attacks because
the the hacker can connect with legitimate wi-fi as well and then he uses that same application
but he uses it and it's called promiscuous packet sniffing which sounds even more rude doesn't it
he uses this to pick up data that's being sent and received on that network
and he can still if he knows what he's doing be able to access other people's
data the best way to protect yourself from these kind of attacks is to use a vpn
a vpn is like a tunnel right so you have a tunnel you go in the tunnel here and you come out over
here and nobody sees what's happening in between and that's what a vpn is but it's using encryption
to protect you from anybody seeing what you're doing so the hacker with his laptop
and his packet sniffer all he's going to see is random alphanumeric characters i've
used a number of vpns over the years but my favorite is nordvpn now i'm a paying customer
i didn't agree to do this just because they asked me to i strongly believe in the use of vpns the
nordvpn is the best that i've seen so far it has a double encryption feature where you can use two
vpn servers and it's so good that the second vpn doesn't even know the original ip of the first vpn
you can use it on all your devices your phone your laptop etc and you can have up to six devices
on one account and if you're not a fan after 30 days you can cancel no worries and for node vpn's
birthday offering 70 off a two year plan plus one month free and a surprise gift if you use my
lincoln code code being esis man and that means it works out at just two pounds 63 a month so i
take my security and my privacy very seriously and while while i'm on a rant if you live in the uk
the government requires all internet providers to store 12 months of your browsing data
plus all the email headers of emails that you've sent out and that you've received the header is
the data in the top bit which is basically who's emailing who ip addresses and stuff like that they
don't read the text of the email but they know who you're emailing and who's emailing you and all of
your browsing data and they have to store internet providers have to store this for 12 months just in
case they want to take a look so even when i'm at home i use vpn so if they ever check my history
all they will say is nonsense superyacht security systems are fighting a constant fight with
hackers with malware with phishing scams with spear phishing scams these are all
legitimate names of types of attacks a phishing scam is where somebody sends you an email
and then it has a link in there or it has an attachment with an application and it tells
you that you you know you've - it's from UPS maybe and you've got a refund of 300
and you just have to click on the link you click on that link they install some software on your
computer and now they can they've circumvented all of your security and now they can see
what you're doing on your computer the spear phishing attack is when this is when somebody
who knows you or somebody who who has information that is close to you they are able to send an
email that makes it look like it's from somebody you know so it might be addressed it might come
from an email address that is a friend of yours or it might come from what looks like it comes from
a work colleague same thing there's a link in there to click on it as soon as you click on it
they've got control of your computer so on board we're always fighting against this kind of attack
and we do this by using the highest encryption we can get and making sure that the switches the the
hardware that that all the traffic goes through have the latest software updates and and we
use applications to protect against those kinds of attacks and things like mac mac spoofing so we
have software that protects us against those kinds of exploits from january 2021 cyber security will
come under the remit of the international safety management system or the ism code
supported by the imo resolution imo is the international maritime organization
requiring ship owners and managers to assess cyber risks and implement relevant measures
new technology more autonomy and greater internet connectivity are all contributing factors
to greater cyber risk at sea even before covert the frequency of attacks on the
maritime industry had risen by more than 40 percent in just a year however since
the start of the pandemic cyber crime generally has increased by more than four hundred percent
after the recent incident with motor yacht Go crashing in to appear in saint martin i hypothesized that
this could have been the result of a cyber attack modern superyachts have more autonomy than ever
and we're not just talking about emails and sensitive data we're talking about integrated
bridge systems and engine control systems connected to the internet which puts those vessels
at greater risk of attack this is something i'm going to go into in greater depth in a
future video in part two we'll look at physical security of the super yacht the owner and the crew
the use of ex-military special forces and the need to have
armed teams on board in dangerous areas we will also look at the latest tech that's available
and some that's coming soon to help the super yacht owner protect his assets at sea
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