The U.S. government has warned that industrial refrigeration units face an “ongoing cyber threat” after reports of cyberattacks on freezers and fridges in supermarkets around the world, U.S. military bases, and at least one blood bank. The alert covers internet-connected refrigeration and cold chain monitoring systems in grocery stores and cold storage facilities, and it says the hacks are affecting the food, agriculture, transportation, and medicine-shipping industries.
Federal warning on connected cooling systems
U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA, the FBI, and several other federal government departments issued the joint statement on Thursday. It says hackers are targeting and compromising internet-connected refrigeration and cold chain monitoring systems in grocery stores and cold storage facilities. The agencies warned that the attacks affect critical infrastructure and can hit several industries at once.
The same statement says successful exploitation could let actors change temperatures and create physical impacts such as fire hazards, loss of inventory, and changes to the service life of the system. A separate fact sheet from the departments says hackers may try to force units into continuous heating and defrost cycles, which can cause widespread inventory loss and equipment hazards.
Recent attacks across Europe
The warning follows several waves of cyberattacks against industrial refrigeration units across the United Kingdom and Europe in recent weeks. Two separate waves let hackers raise temperatures on freezers and chilling units in at least a dozen countries. The result was spoiled defrosted food and destroyed produce. Some of the affected systems were remote-controlled refrigeration units made by Danish company Danfoss, which had stopped providing security updates to its customers’ freezers.
Blood bank and military cases
Hackers also targeted a blood bank in France. Its refrigerated units raised temperatures in cold units containing donated blood supplies, but the attack was stopped before it could compromise the blood stores. The U.S. Department of Defense is investigating a series of hacks aimed at freezers used by the military, according to Reuters. The hacks were first reported by Signal and Silence.
Attribution and response advice
The U.S. has not attributed the hacks to any specific group or government. Security researchers have broadly attributed the attacks to Iran, and U.S. officials reportedly suspect Iran is the likely culprit. CISA, the FBI, and the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Transportation urged affected industries to remove remote control systems from the internet, change and strengthen passwords, apply patches where possible, and retire equipment that is no longer supported by the vendor.
Chris Butera, CISA’s acting cybersecurity chief, said, “Every organization that depends on refrigeration and monitoring systems should assume it could be a target.”
Licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0 International