For the second time in a month this past week, supermarket chains in at least seven European countries suffered cyberattacks on their refrigerators and freezers in dozens of their stores.
Stores in Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden reported problems with their refrigeration systems, and several companies confirmed they fell victim to a cyberattack.
Those incidents follow an incident in France last month where attackers seized control of the cooling units in as many as 700 supermarkets. In the attack, threat actors increased temperatures up to 50C (122F). causing food losses in the millions of euros.
In an effort to raise awareness regarding the issue in the United States, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Department of Transportation (DoT) published a fact sheet warning organizations of ongoing cyber threat activity targeting industrial refrigeration and cold chain monitoring systems.
Critical infrastructure sectors that widely use these systems include chemical, food and agriculture, transportation systems, and healthcare and public health.
Target of Attackers
Globally, malicious actors are targeting vulnerabilities and weaknesses in unpatched or Internet-accessible electronic temperature controllers and commercial refrigeration controllers in retail grocery and cold storage facilities.
Specifically, the actors may exploit these flaws through multiple vectors:
- Authentication bypass
- Arbitrary code injection
- Weak configurations
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.
Authoring organizations urge owners and operators to immediately take the following actions:
- Eliminate public internet exposure
- Isolate operational technology (OT) devices
- Enforce credential security
- Apply patches
- Restrict access
- Have reliable backups
- Monitor and report
- Review setpoint ranges
“In close collaboration with our government, industry and international partners, CISA is actively tracking this threat activity,” said CISA Acting Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Chris Butera. “Every organization that depends on refrigeration and monitoring systems should assume it could be a target. We urge you to review the joint fact sheet and take action now to close known security gaps.”
Practical Protection Steps
“Industrial refrigeration and cold-chain monitoring systems protect food, medicine, and other temperature-sensitive products, making them attractive targets for malicious cyber actors,” said FBI Cyber Branch Operations Director Brett Leatherman. “We are seeing these systems targeted across critical infrastructure sectors globally, putting inventory and equipment at risk. This fact sheet provides clear, practical steps that network defenders can take to reduce that risk and protect operations.”
Click here for more information on the Fact Sheet.