“We’ve commenced an investigation into the incident and we’re not commenting further as it’s an ongoing investigation,” an Australian Federal Police spokesman said.

DP World Australia told Reuters yesterday that operations at impacted ports were not yet restored. A statement said the company was “working around the clock to restore normal operations safely” after the breach was detected on Friday.

A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on whether operations were restored.

DP World Australia, part of Dubai’s state-owned ports giant DP World, operates four container terminals in Australia in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Western Australia’s Fremantle.

Late yesterday, Australia’s national cybersecurity coordinator Darren Goldie, appointed this year in response to several major data breaches, said the “interruption” was “likely to continue for a number of days and will impact the movement of goods into and out of the country”.

“DP World Australia has advised it has restricted access to its Australian port operations in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle while it investigates the incident,” Goldie said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil said yesterday that the government was coordinating a response to the “cyber incident”.

According to DP World, in the Asia Pacific region it employs more than 7,000 people and has ports and terminals in 18 locations.