On August 7, 2026, the giant tanker “VL PROSPERITY”, with a capacity of 2.3 million barrels of crude oil, which was sailing under the Liberian flag from Egypt’s Sidi Kerir port toward one of the ports of the United States, was targeted by a major cyberattack in the Strait of Gibraltar, and all of its communications were cut off for 30 hours.
According to one of the ship’s crew members, the attackers infiltrated the engine-room systems, reduced the engine’s cooling flow, increased the engine speed, and disabled the ship’s fuel and engine-oil tank. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the incident.
Some Russian-language media outlets, citing senior Russian analysts, assess the operation within the framework of a direct confrontation between the Resistance Front and the US, and believe its message to Washington is that US assets in international waters do not have immunity and that the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf should also not regard changing the route of their oil exports as a way to circumvent this surveillance, because monitoring of these routes will continue.
