Hackers invade French blood bank! Refrigerator soared to 110 degrees, employees rushed to save plasma

The exterior of the headquarters of the French Blood Agency (EFS) in Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris. Several blood banks under the organization were recently invaded by hackers and attempted to maliciously increase the freezing temperature. Fortunately, they were intercepted in time and no blood products were damaged. (AP)

After the refrigeration systems of supermarkets in France, Belgium and other European countries were attacked by hackers, the latest victim turned out to be blood bank freezers. The French Blood Agency (EFS) said that the cold storage room storing blood was affected by hackers and the temperature was set to rise to 110 degrees Celsius. Fortunately, staff intervened in time and no damage was caused.

According to comprehensive foreign media reports, since October, the refrigeration and freezer cabinets of hundreds of supermarkets in many European countries have been attacked by hackers, resulting in a large amount of fresh food being thawed and spoiled, with losses amounting to millions of euros. A well-known Dutch supermarket chain group even predicts that this wave of security attacks will sharply reduce revenue by more than NT$8 billion in a single quarter. Unexpectedly, this wave of temperature control attacks did not stop and spread further to critical medical infrastructure.

The attack targeted three plasma cold storage facilities owned by EFS. Hackers were suspected of intruding through component vulnerabilities of third-party equipment suppliers in an attempt to directly raise the original low temperature of minus 30 degrees to above the boiling point. Fortunately, the automatic monitoring system issued an immediate warning, and the staff quickly transferred all the plasma for blood transfusion and pharmaceutical raw materials, and subsequent operations were not interrupted.

Through surveillance of fake freezer software trap "honeypots", security experts discovered that the second wave of attacks was highly targeted, and hackers deliberately chose late at night to simultaneously increase the temperature of multiple devices in order to achieve maximum damage. The research team also observed that the targets of the spy scan on the eve of the attack were all concentrated in Europe, and the decoys in other areas were not disturbed.

Although the pro-Russian hacker group has made high-profile claims in the community to have committed the crime, research institutions are highly skeptical, pointing out that the organization has only a record of denial of service attacks in the past, and often has a history of impersonation. Experts analyze that Iranian state-level hackers with relevant records are also involved in serious suspicions, and they cannot rule out that the entire incident is a prank by different organizations, imitators, or even teenagers.

Reports pointed out that similar tactics had attacked dozens of Israeli supermarkets as early as the year before last. Freezers at at least six US military bases had also been forced into defrost mode. The outside world was worried that this might be an outpost test of a national-level "hybrid warfare". The French National Cyber ​​Security Agency and the Ministry of Health are jointly investigating, and many European countries have also issued early warnings on various channels to prevent blockage attacks.