European Freezers Keep Being Attacked By Hackers. Experts Believe Russia Is Behind.
Repeated cyberattacks against supermarket refrigeration units in Europe have sparked concerns that Russia could be conducting sabotage attacks.
The latest hack targeted freezers and refrigerators at supermarkets in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia, Finland and Romania. They followed a cyberattack on French grocery stores in October.
Also in August, six U.S. military bases had commissaries that experienced problems with their freezers and refrigerators. Officials now believe that the issue might have been a cyberattack, with hackers raising temperatures overnight.
“This attack is a wake-up call. We have filled our homes and shops with devices that are really small computers, yet we still treat them like ordinary appliances,” Katerina Mitrokotsa, a cybersecurity professor at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, told the Associated Press. “A fridge doesn’t look like a security risk, and that’s exactly why attackers like it.”
Officials blamed the success of the attack on outdated technology. The affected units had old remote-control modules that no longer received security and software updates.
“Supermarkets connect their fridges so they can monitor temperatures around the clock across hundreds of stores, get alerts before food spoils, cut energy costs and let technicians fix faults remotely,” Mitrokotsa told the AP. “This saves money and reduces food waste, but every connected fridge is also an entry point that needs to be secured like any other IT system.”
The attack highlights the potential vulnerability of outdated technology that could be used by state-sponsored hackers to launch a crippling, massive cyberattack. Some cybersecurity experts have said the incidents have all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored attack and believe that Russia might be behind them.
“We strongly believe this activity could be attributed to a Russian state-sponsored threat actor,” Xavier Bellekens, CEO of cybersecurity firm Lupovis, told Politico.
Bellekens told the outlet that previous attacks against decoys the firm use to collect data pointed to servers that previously were used by Russian groups.
Andrea Margellati, director of Centro Studi Internazionali, an independent geopolitical think tank based in Rome, told Politico that Russia could be ramping up its efforts to send Europe a message: That they can attack Europe within its own borders.
