Technology1 min read

U.S. government warns of ‘ongoing cyber threat’ amid mass-hacks of industrial retail and military freezers

By · Via TechCrunch · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The joint warning from the FBI and CISA highlights vulnerabilities in cold storage facilities, commercial retail chains, and defense installations. European and British facilities in at least a dozen nations have already experienced spoiled food supplies, though a French blood bank successfully intercepted an attack on its storage systems. Security researchers and American officials suspect Iranian actors are behind the campaign, prompting the Department of Defense to investigate intrusions into military-operated units. In response, federal authorities are urging facility managers to immediately disconnect remote-access controls from the public web and replace obsolete hardware.

Key points

  • Attackers deliberately trigger continuous heating and defrosting cycles to cause inventor…: Attackers deliberately trigger continuous heating and defrosting cycles to cause inventory loss and create acute fire hazards.
  • Facility managers are urged to immediately isolate remote-control refrigeration units fro…: Facility managers are urged to immediately isolate remote-control refrigeration units from the open internet and apply software patches.
  • Although official attribution remains unconfirmed, U.S. officials and cybersecurity resea…: Although official attribution remains unconfirmed, U.S. officials and cybersecurity researchers suspect Iranian actors are executing these intrusions.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

The U.S. government is warning of an “ongoing cyber threat” facing industrial refrigeration units, after reports of cyberattacks targeting freezers and fridges in supermarkets around the world, U.S. military bases, and at least one blood bank.

U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA, the FBI, and several other federal government departments warned in a joint statement on Thursday that hackers are targeting and compromising internet-connected refrigeration and cold chain monitoring systems in grocery stores and cold storage facilities. The statement said that the hacks are hitting critical infrastructure, such as the food, agriculture, transportation, and medicine-shipping industries.

“If successfully exploited, the actors could change the temperature and possibly cause physical impacts such as fire hazards, loss of inventory and changes to the service life of the system,” the agencies warn.

The warning comes after several waves of cyberattacks targeting industrial refrigeration units across the United Kingdom and Europe in recent weeks. Two separate waves of attacks allowed hackers to crank up the temperature on freezers and chilling units in at least a dozen countries, spoiling defrosted food and destroying produce. Some of the…

Technology