Cyberattack shows few signs of spreading to Asia

A Cadbury plant in Australia owned by Mondelez, the US food group, and an Indian port run by Danish shipping group AP Moller-Maersk — both companies hit earlier in the day by the global attack — were among the facilities reporting outages.

India's shipping ministry warned of a potential rise in congestion at the country's largest port, after operations at a terminal run by Maersk were seriously disrupted by the cyber attack on that company. The terminal is one of three at Jawaharlal Nehru Port, which serves Mumbai and the surrounding region. The ministry said the government's national cyber security co-ordinator was proceeding to the port, which was expanding its cargo storage areas until the congestion abated.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust had been informed by Maersk that the problem was "a consequence of a worldwide disruption being faced by them because of a cyber attack", the ministry said.

In Hong Kong, some employees of WPP were told to work from home, as the world's biggest advertising and marketing group struggled to resolve IT problems.

The advertising group's main website, which initially said it was down for "routine maintenance" on Tuesday afternoon, was back online on Wednesday morning, with the company saying in a statement that it wanted to "return to normal operations as soon as possible".Operations at one of three terminals at India's largest container port JNPT, near the commercial hub of Mumbai, have been disrupted by the global ransomware attack, the port said on Wednesday. The affected terminal is operated by Danish shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk, which said on Tuesday that the cyber attack had caused outages in its computer systems globally.

Clients were notified on Wednesday morning that vessel operations at the terminal would be hit and that the company could not say when normal services would resume, according to one shipping industry source.

In a note to global clients, Maersk said: "Access to most ports is not impacted, however some APM Terminals are affected and gates are closed."

The port has been trying to clear containers manually, but operational capacity has dropped to a third at the terminal, Anil Diggikar, chairman of Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT), told Reuters on Wednesday morning. "This is fallout of global cyber attack. We are hopeful that operations will normalize in a day," he said. Containers are piling up outside the port due to the delay in loading and unloading at Gateway Terminals India, he said. The Indian government said on Wednesday it had sent Gulshan Rai, India's national cyber security coordinator, to JNPT to deal with the situation.