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86% of Superyacht AV Systems Hacked

Matt
Matt |

 

If you work on a superyacht, there's an 86% chance your AV system has just been hacked.

That was the result of a poll within a messaging group with over 200 members, comprising ETOs and AVITs from the superyacht industry.

The tool I'm talking about is Plex.

Plex is an online media server that superyachts use for movies, TV shows, and other content. Plex confirms an unauthorised third party has accessed email addresses, usernames, and passwords.

The passwords were securely hashed, which means they're encrypted and not easily readable. However, they could be cracked if bad actors had access to AI. The good news is that no credit card information was leaked. But that's not the point. For the admins of your Plex system or any other super users with access to the NAS or media server, this opens a door to much more than just movies. It could expose IPs, device information, web history, and, worse, probably the same password elsewhere.

It's not like I've recently been told that a captain lost owner funds because their email account and bank account shared the same password.

If you use Plex, here are the steps you need to take now.

  1. Change your password.
  2. , enable or re-enable MFA.
  3. Sign out of all other devices. That's easier to do on a desktop. Here's a link to a video that's very helpful, to show you how to do all these things with Plex.
  4. Lastly, check all of Plex's permissions. It may have read and write permissions, which is a risk, depending on what that system has access to on that device. It's recommended to change to read-only.
  5. You don't need to panic, but you do need to act.

Go and check out the how-to in the comments. Follow Anchorpoint for more cybersecurity news and how-tos to keep you cyber safe.

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