On Monday night, several grocery stores, cafés and restaurants were affected when refrigerators and freezers suddenly started heating up. Large amounts of food were destroyed, and similar reports have come from other countries, including Luxembourg, Estonia, the Netherlands, Finland and Ireland.
Those behind the attacks managed to take control of the refrigerator and freezer systems and adjust the temperatures. It is unclear who or what was behind them, but several experts believe they were not sophisticated cyberattacks.
“It is likely that this was the work of amateurs,” cybersecurity expert Emil Olofsson told TT on Monday.
Unclear purpose
According to David Jacoby, an IT security expert at the company Syndis, the purpose of the attack is unclear.
Whoever was responsible exploited a vulnerability in the system that controls the temperature - a vulnerability that has been well known since last summer. Cybersecurity involves finding such vulnerabilities and fixing them.
“But as soon as you disclose a vulnerability, there is a risk that others will exploit it,” Jacoby says.
It became known as early as this summer that companies in Sweden had been affected. At Coop, flaws were discovered in the system at six stores. Upgrades to the system were planned for Wednesday, SvD reports, but there was not enough time before the stores were hacked.
A basic problem is that many systems are connected to the internet without adequate security. Companies should use a VPN, a kind of encrypted tunnel between the router and the internet.
Think about it
This also applies to many of our personal electronic devices. Many people have apps to control everything from lighting to heating at home.
“My advice is to think before connecting your systems and consider whether it is really necessary,” Jacoby says.
If you have a router at home, most devices connect to it rather than directly to the internet. But if you use an app to control, for example, the dishwasher, it communicates over the network.
For those who have connected devices, David Jacoby has some advice:
“Make sure your device has the latest firmware, change the default password, and disconnect devices that don’t need to be connected.”
What do you think?