Oil terminals in some of Europe’s biggest ports appear to have been disrupted by ransomware, according to reports.

A broker in the region told AFP that the attacks are disrupting the oil supply chain.

“There was a cyber-attack at various terminals, quite some terminals are disrupted,” Jelle Vreeman, senior broker at Riverlake in Rotterdam, told the newswire.

“Their software is being hijacked, and they can’t process barges. Basically, the operational system is down.”

The Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp oil hub, which spans ports across the Netherlands and Belgium, is believed to have borne the brunt of the attacks. AFP cited local Belgian reports that logistics and storage firm SEA-Tank Terminal is one of those impacted in Antwerp.

According to a separate report from The Associated Press, at least two energy companies in the Belgian ports of Antwerp and Ghent were hit by cyber-attacks, with the government’s Federal Computer Crime Unit opening an investigation.

This follows reports earlier this week that two German oil logistics firms were struck by ransomware: Oiltanking GmbH Group and Mabanaft Group.

Both companies were forced to declare force majeure, a legal clause used in emergencies when companies cannot fulfill their contractual obligations.

However, the head of Germany’s federal office for information security, Arne Schönbohm, is quoted as saying the incident is serious but “not grave.”

Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has already admitted it has been forced to reroute supplies due to the incident.

The news has uncomfortable echoes of the Colonial Pipeline attack in May 2021, which crippled oil supplies up and down the US east coast for days, leading to queues at gas stations.

This time the culprit, at least in the attacks in Germany, appears to be BlackCat (aka “alphv”), a relatively new ransomware-as-a-service variant.

Trustpilot said today that it is planning legal action against businesses involved in soliciting fraudulent reviews on its site.

The Danish consumer reviews platform said it was forced to remove over two million fake reviews in 2020 alone, accounting for nearly 6% of those submitted to its site that year.

Although the firm is investing in automated fraud, enforcement and anomaly detection technologies, it said this will now be matched by a step-up in litigation efforts.

Repeat offenders will be hit with enforcement action. Trustpilot said it would seek to prevent them from soliciting fake reviews and try to recover any damages owed. If successful, these will be donated to organizations that protect consumers from online misinformation.

Other tools at Trustpilot’s disposal are cease and desist notices, termination of business, and public banners on offending firms’ profile pages indicating fraud.

“Consumers rely heavily on reviews to make more informed and confident purchasing decisions each and every day. Protecting and promoting trust is fundamental to Trustpilot’s mission,” said the digital firm’s chief trust officer, Carolyn Jameson.

“Whilst the vast majority of businesses use reviews constructively to help get them closer to their customers, we’re prepared to do everything within our power to clamp down on the small minority who do not behave as they should, and instead  use fake and misleading reviews to take advantage of consumers – often those consumers who are particularly vulnerable.”

Fake reviews are an increasing problem for platform providers, consumers and innocent vendors. A report out last year estimated that they could be responsible for as much as $152bn in purchases.

Also, last year, a misconfigured cloud database exposed a significant scheme by vendors using the Amazon marketplace to buy fake reviews from consumers. Vendors send reviewers a list of products to choose from, and if they leave a five-star review, the individual will get to keep the item.

At least 200,000 fake reviewers were implicated in this one scheme alone.

The situation has deteriorated to the point that regulators are stepping in. Last June, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced the opening of a formal probe into Amazon and Google over concerns that they’re not doing enough to protect consumers from fake reviews.