Tuesday 22 September 2020 · below the Index · spike

CMA CGM cyber attack

Type otherWindow 2020-09-21 → 2020-10-01 (11 days)

Shipping line CMA CGM suffered a suspected data breach from a cyber attack in late September 2020, affecting the major container shipping operator. The incident was reported on September 30 and October 1, with headlines noting it was the second cyberattack on the global shipping industry within a week.

Peak 58.1 on Friday 25 September 2020. The shaded band is the incident window.

Where the attention came from

Search
22%
Research
43%
News
32%
Social (X only)
3%

Public curiosity-led, both over the window and on the peak day. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.

Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.

How unusual it was

58.1
Index at peak (50 = calmest year)
52%
of days since 2020 rank below it
for the extra attention to halve
0 days
back to the pre-incident level

This was above 52% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Sunday 13 September 2020.

How far it spread

Shipping in general
×2.5
Car carriers (ro-ro)
×1.8
Bulk carriers
Gas carriers
Tankers
Container & cargo ships

Stayed in one vessel type — 1 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.

Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.

How it was framed the frame glossary →

Progress
32%
Price
28%
Planet
15%
Politics
14%
People
10%

Lead frame: freight markets. Trade press was 6% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)

Acting, or acted upon

entirely acted uponmostly acted uponneutralmostly actorprimary actor

In 10% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 4% of it was strongly negative in tone.

Data for this incident (JSON)

Maritime Attention Index, incident: CMA CGM cyber attack, peak 58.1 on 25 September 2020. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2020-cma-cgm-cyber-attack/

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