At what point will people start wondering why every appliance needs to be connected to the internet, thus offering an open door to hackers?
Last month, we saw reports of freezers being hacked in France, along with suspected cyberattacks involving refrigeration systems at U.S. military bases, resulting in food spoilage. Now, the same thing has happened in Europe, in Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg and Estonia. The hackers didn't just turn the freezers off; they turned them up, making the freezers into ovens, with the result being a great deal of food spoiled.
Supermarkets in Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg and Estonia were hit Monday by problems with freezers and fridges that apparently were caused by cyberattacks, forcing some to dispose of ruined food.
The problems follow a case last month in which attackers remotely took control of refrigeration systems in hundreds of supermarkets and independent stores across France, sending temperatures soaring.
In Sweden, ICA Group supermarket chain spokesperson Gustaf Nilsson told news agency TT that “a limited number” of stores were affected overnight by an incident that affected refrigeration and freezing systems. He declined to give a specific number.
The ICA Kvantum branch in Sjöbo in southern Sweden wrote on its Facebook page that its fridges and freezers had been hacked and set to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). It said it was working to discard the affected items.
The affected chains and the distribution networks don't appear to have been badly disrupted; at least, not this time. This was, however, a pretty wide-ranging attack.
The Coop chain said that six of its stores in central Sweden had problems with their fridges and freezers, TT reported, though it didn’t immediately have details.
The Delhaize chain said that an “IT incident” had affected refrigeration systems in several dozen of its stores, mostly in Belgium but also a few in neighboring Luxembourg.
“In the affected stores, the range of fresh and frozen products is temporarily somewhat limited. Our distribution centers are operating normally, and there has been no disruption to deliveries to our stores,” spokesperson Sarah De Meester said.
It may make a certain amount of sense to have some commercial appliances like this connected, from a certain point of view; it allows the management of a store or a warehouse to monitor temperatures inside commercial freezers remotely, without necessarily having a person on site. But now these events have pointed up a weakness, and that is that anything connected can be hacked. It would seem the prudent thing to do, to disconnect these freezers and similar equipment forthwith. This is, remember, not the first time we've seen this stunt pulled; it has happened right here, in U.S. military bases, as well as in France.
The troubling thing about this is that it seems to be escalating; these incidents seem to be spreading across more countries, raising concerns about how far the attacks could reach. Most major cities only have three or four days of food on hand, and the supply of frozen foods may be even less than that. If hackers could scale up an attack like this, they may be able to remove any frozen foods — fresh meats, frozen vegetables, prepared foods — from the tables of millions of people. That's a serious threat.
It seems a good time to re-think this whole "internet of things" concept.
Editor's Note: This article was updated post-publication for clarity.