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from the instead-of-csv-files-we-should-use...xls? dept.
A Suezmax container ship can hold over 10,000 TEUs or “Twenty Foot Equivalent Units”. Most containers carried are double this length – FEUs or “Forty Foot Equivalent Units” – but that still means in the region of 5,000 containers.
Only around one third of that cargo is on-deck though – most is hidden in the holds, under massive hatch covers. To get a container out from the bottom of the hold could involve removing 50 containers from that hatch cover, removing the hatch cover, then taking a further 8 containers to access the bottom of a stack.
Screw up the load plan and you create chaos. What if the load plan, which is just a CSV list or similar, is hacked and modified? No-one knows what container is where. instead of taking 24-48 hours to load and unload, it could take weeks to manually re-inventory the ship. Time is money for a ship. Lots of money. Blocking a port for a period whilst the mess is resolved incurs enormous costs and could even jeopardise supplies to an entire country.
Seems like more bang-for-the-buck than an IED [Improvised Explosive Device].
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @04:03AM (5 children)
tfa sounds like the plan is to simply scramble the container locations, someone that ordered widgets from China gets hoodies from Vietnam.
Wouldn't it be more "fun" to load all the heavy containers on one side of the ship, so it rolls over?
Of course it's no fun for me as the shipper if my cargo ends up in Davy Jones' locker.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday November 22 2017, @05:27AM (3 children)
Ummm, I would think with 5k-10k containers that if that happened you would fire the crane operators. They would be drinking beers and continuing to stack, the entire time ignoring that their containers are angling away from them and that none of them are being set down level anymore. You would have many, many, many opportunities to notice it start to turn over.
I could only imagine that is willful ignorance, unless entirely automated.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 22 2017, @06:50PM (2 children)
More "interesting" would be loading the heavy containers on top and light containers below. A top heavy load wouldn't be visually apparent at the dock but could spell trouble in rough seas.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Wednesday November 22 2017, @09:06PM (1 child)
Another poster basically explained that it's impossible. Too many people involved getting real time reports, the cranes also weigh the cargo at the same time. You would need to fool the cranes about the weight of the cargo. Even then the poster pointed out that there are other ways to detect it before it even casts off from its moorings.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 22 2017, @09:40PM
That poster mis-understood the attack. The containers would contain exactly what they should, so the weights would match up with the IDs just fine. They would know exactly where they were. They would just be positioned anti-optimally for safety or unloading.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @05:27AM
Wouldn't happen without a lot of other things happening first, such as hacking internal sensors, instruments on the bridge, and the brains of the people actually monitoring the vessel while it's being loaded.
Or did you think they did it blind?