Cargo Theft Goes Digital as Cybercrime Invades the Supply Chain

Cybercrime is finding a foothold in the most physical corner of global commerce, the freight economy.

As trucks and trailers get smarter, so do the criminals tracking them. Not through binoculars or back-alley deals, but through supply chain dashboards, network vulnerabilities, and remote access tools. And the criminals aren’t just after sensitive documents or data. They’re hijacking actual freight.

It’s a 21st century update to the centuries-old threat of cargo theft. The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) estimates that criminals are absconding with $35 billion in cargo theft losses annually in just the U.S.

These aren’t small grease-under-the-fingernails heists. They are often highly orchestrated operations, timed around high-volume periods like holiday weekends and fourth-quarter surges when consumer goods are most in transit. Yet what’s changing is the battleground. Instead of slipping into truck yards late at night, the attackers slip into the digital workflows that govern the supply chain.

Attackers use sophisticated social engineering to impersonate legitimate carriers, freight brokers and even shipper contacts. They trick carriers into downloading legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools under false pretenses, then leverage these compromised tools to unlock ongoing access to operational systems like load boards, dispatch platforms and fleet management software.

With this access, criminals can reroute shipments, change pickup information and even coordinate fraudulent deliveries to fake endpoints, often orchestrated through complicit intermediaries or shell logistics firms. In other words, digital break-ins now lead directly to physical theft.

Read more: Tariffs Test the Myth of Supply Chain Control

Cyber Deception Replaces Brute Force for Freight Heists

At first glance, the trucking and freight ecosystem appears insulated by the physicality of its assets. Trucks, trailers, and pallets don’t move unless real drivers and real infrastructure intervenes. Yet increasingly, it’s software that tells those drivers where and when to go. Telematics, transportation management systems (TMS), electronic logging devices (ELDs) and cloud-based fleet portals have become core infrastructure. And like any software, they can be manipulated.

Today, the average freight transaction involves multiple handoffs: a broker assigns a load to a carrier, who dispatches a driver, who reports back through a mobile TMS. Paperwork may pass through customs brokers, insurance providers, and warehousing partners. Each of these nodes is a potential vulnerability. And cybercriminals are well aware that once they impersonate or compromise one node, the others will follow the path of least resistance.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Vendors and Vulnerabilities: The Cyberattack Squeeze on Mid-Market Firms” found that vendors and supply chains are the soft underbelly of mid-market defenses, with 38% of invoice fraud cases and 43% of phishing attacks stemming from compromised vendors.

After all, in a world where the password to the Louvre video security system that was breached by attackers was simply “Louvre,” exploiting the trust firms place in software is becoming second nature to attackers.

Additionally, freight’s decentralized nature makes it harder to mount a unified defense. A bank or health system can centralize its cybersecurity. The freight industry, by design, cannot.

Read also: How CFOs Are Optimizing Their B2B Supply Chains Without AI

Defending the Attack Surface of Digital Freight Tech

While cargo theft is a familiar cost in freight, cyber-enabled theft has different ramifications. It leaves behind not just stolen goods, but broken systems of trust. Customers lose faith. Partners question credentials. Carriers are flagged. Whole supply chains get re-evaluated. The reputational damage often exceeds the retail value of the stolen load.

Combating cyber-enabled freight theft will require a cultural shift. Security must become as inherent to fleet operations as vehicle maintenance or driver safety. That means not just hardening software but strengthening human vigilance.

The newest PYMNTS Intelligence report, “From Spark to Strategy: How Product Leaders Are Using Gen AI to Gain a Competitive Edge,” finds that more than 3 in 4 product officers (77%) are using generative artificial intelligence for cybersecurity.

In finance and healthcare, threat intelligence sharing has been crucial in combating cyber risk. Freight may need a similar model: a consortium or clearinghouse through which carriers, brokers, and shippers can report suspicious digital activity without risking commercial embarrassment.

Cyber attackers have already learned the language of logistics. It’s time the logistics world fluently speaks the language of cybersecurity. Only then can the freight economy keep its wheels, and its cargo, moving safely forward.