## 6 Discussion
### Piracy and Other Crime
Indeed, a Singapore academic and expert in regional maritime security pointed out that the targets of piracy in the SOMS are, in a majority of cases, vesselsplying regional routes rather than ultra large international tankers and cargo ships, stating \"when we look at maritime crimes and the victims, the victims are usually those plying regional routes only, not those of international trade... if you go through the last 20 yearsdata, most of them are interregional or going between Indonesian ports\" [69]. These are the so-called 'rust buckets', very small tankers, and small general cargo vessels that are 'low and slow' and present the easiest targets to board while underway. \"When you read headlines like 'Tanker Hijacked in the Strait of Malacca' look into the detail of how big the tanker is\" she advises [68]. However, the motivation for targeting interregional shipping is due to the vulnerability of the 'low and slow' targets. If regional pirate groups discovered an easy method of remotely disabling a larger international tanker or cargo ship, they may be bold enough to attempt to exploit it. However, any attempt to target international shipping and the subsequent media attention it would generate would certainly lead to a response from the authorities in the littoral states, likely coordinated under the auspices of ASEAN, and executed under the framework of the Malacca Straits Patrols [70] (MSP), a regional grouping tasked with securing the SOMS. Statistics issued by ReCAAP show that there were two violent crew abduction incidents (Category 1 incidents) per year in 2018 and 2019, and a single incident in 2020. At the time of writing, the most recent ReCAAP quarterly report states \"There was no report of incident of abduction of crew for ransom during January-September 2023. The last known incident occurred on 17 January 2020. No crew is currently held in captivity by the ASG. The Philippines, Malaysian and Indonesian authorities continued to maintain surveillance and military operations to neutralise the ASG.\" [64] However, ReCAAP advises \"with the presence of the remnants of the ASG in the area, the threat of abduction of crew for ransom in Sulu and TawiTawi continues to remain\" [65]. Particularly relevant to this discussion of maritime cybersecurity is the use of technology employed in piracy and robbery. In one notable case, criminals hacked into the shore side computer systems of a shipping company to identify high value cargo. While the ship was transiting, the SOMS pirates boarded, armed with barcode readers, proceeded to scan containers looking for the particular cargo they wanted, in this case jewels, forced open the container, stole the cargo, and made their escape. It is a good example of a criminal enterprise using digital technology to augment their attacks on shipping [44]. It is difficult to gauge to what extent pirate groups are using cyber capabilities; however, this paper warns, as above, that developments in generative artificial intelligence--to write code, create realistic deepfake images, videos, audio, and text--will be adapted by criminal groups in innovative ways to augment their criminal activities [60,61]. The ReCAAP ISC report which catalogues and dissects multiple aspects of the recorded cases from the time of day of the attack to the size of the group, the weapons they carried, etc., makes no mention of 'cyber' aspects in any of the cases presented [65]. It is recommended that ReCAAP report cyber-physical incidents of attacks on shipping as part of their reporting mechanisms.