Supermarket Refrigeration Units Hacked: Big Food Loss

As if I needed yet another reason for people not to hookup everything to the internet, here comes a story from France. Hundreds of French supermarkets have been hit by a cyberattack which caused their refrigerator and freezer units to heat up, spoiling fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros. Managers arriving at branches of several supermarket chains were hit by a wave of hot air from the freezers. In some places there were even small fires.

Hackers gained control of temperature regulating software of the units, forcing some to warm to 50C (120F) overnight. Guess what all that food spoilage is going to do prices. Supermarkets already have some of the lowest profit margins among businesses

More than 100 of Cooperative U’s supermarkets were targeted, as well as 180 stores from Intermarché. A spokesman stated another 100 shops were urgently disconnected from the internet to prevent the same thing happening to them. Other major food retailers including Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc were also hit by the attack, which targeted software provided by Danish engineering firm Danfoss. The software permits remote temperature regulation of units.

I argue constantly that society and businesses need to disconnect. Here’s more proof. Temperatures should not be regulated online. It’s one thing to have online notifications for irregular temperatures as a safety precaution, but adjusting them should require in-store manual intervention.

Commercial freezers regularly go through short overnight defrost periods which raise temperatures slightly. In this case, the hackers ordered the units to heat up and stay hot. Danfoss admitted the affected cold units were older models whose security software could not be updated to ward off a risk they had already identified.

That begs the question, if they couldn’t ward off a known risk, why were they not disconnected from online access upon such knowledge? Additionally, was this the case for all the stores affected? The full scale of the attack is unclear as of this writing. However, figures supplied by individual chains suggest about 400 stores were affected out of 15,000 or so overall in France – slightly under 3% of stores.

Danfoss added that it had "long advised" businesses to keep supported systems up to date. Okay, but apparently, not all the units had systems that were supported. So take them offline.

Carrefour said units in 80 of its stores were hacked, while Monoprix said 5% of its 400-plus stores were affected, with food removed from sale if its condition could not be guaranteed. Mousquetaires Group - which owns Intermarché and Netto - said some fresh and frozen food display units remained out of service as this story was released.

Two supermarkets in the Alsace region reported losses of €270,000 ($302,000) between them. Nationwide damage is expected to be in the millions.

Authorities condemned the attacks and the weaponization of food. I can only laugh. Here’s a better idea. Since crimes never cease, how about securing the food from the possibility of being weaponized? Food was arguably just as safe prior to the internet as after the internet. Online convenience should never trump safety.

Source used: BBC

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