The European Commission held two emergency meetings, on Tuesday, in the wake of the cyber attack that targeted food storage refrigerators of famous stores and caused the destruction of food in nine European countries, on Monday.
The first meeting was devoted to discussing the repercussions of the attack with the Union’s inter-institutional working group on cybersecurity, which includes Union agencies, including Europol, while the second meeting was coordinated through a cooperation network linking the national authorities of member states to manage large-scale cyber crises, according to a European Union spokesman.
A group of major grocery stores in at least nine European countries announced on Monday that their food refrigeration units had been subjected to a cyber attack that caused a sudden increase in temperature. The attack came three weeks after a similar attack on French stores, but it was smaller.
The European Union warned on Monday of attempts to target food supply chains. European Union Commissioner for Food and Agriculture, Christoph Hansen, said that food security “requires greater attention at all levels,” and that targeting it has become “a fait accompli.”
The attack, attributed to hackers, hit stores in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal and Italy, and stores were forced to throw away food that was spoiled or was at risk of spoilage, which raised concerns about food security. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack in France last month or the attacks that occurred Monday.
Dr. Mohamed Mohsen Ramadan, a cybersecurity and cybercrime advisor and artificial intelligence expert, describes what happened as a “cyber war on food, energy, and vital systems.”
He told the BBC: “Cyber attacks no longer aim to steal data and money only, but have become capable of causing direct physical damage to food, energy, vital systems, and the infrastructure of countries.”
Belgium was the European country most exposed to the attacks, which began when the Carrefour chain in Belgium announced a disturbance in about 15 of its 700 stores across the country. Carrefour Belgium spokesman, Mich Verguin, said: “It is a cyber attack. There is no other reason.”
Hackers were able to raise the temperatures of refrigerators in some stores to between 50 and 70 degrees Celsius, turning them into something like “ovens” to destroy tons of food. Is this a prelude to larger attacks that could affect infrastructure, energy networks, and the financial system, and plunge Europe into disaster?
Indeed, European countries such as Britain and Germany have begun to prepare for disasters and have asked citizens to store food and basic needs that will last them for days, in preparation for future unrest and cyber attacks using artificial intelligence, which has led some to expect the worst and more cyber attacks.
Technically, these systems rely on industrial control units and remote management and monitoring software. Initial reports showed that poorly secured Internet connection interfaces, default passwords, and old unsupported software were among the most prominent factors of penetration, which allowed attackers to manipulate cooling settings, according to Dr. Ramadan.
No politically motivated "activist" group claimed responsibility for the attack, nor did any group of ransomware hackers exploit this vulnerability to demand financial compensation and blackmail companies, so what is most likely is the presence of a so-called state-linked actor, similar to the electronic hacking units operated by some countries such as North Korea, according to a report by the British newspaper The Guardian.
The Belgian group "Sabkobel", which specializes in industrial cooling systems, said that it began securing its facilities after the attack in France, but about 10 percent of the systems had not yet been updated, and some of them were in the affected stores on Monday.
Belgian authorities began investigating the attacks, and saw them as "a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumer confidence in it, and it serves as a warning that we must take seriously."
Hackers penetrate modern stores by exploiting outdated software and security vulnerabilities in smart control systems connected to the Internet (IoT). Applications, trained models, and artificial intelligence tools can actually be used to carry out specific tasks that help in hacking, penetrating, and deceiving security systems, according to Dr. Ammar Mohamed, professor of artificial intelligence at Cairo University.
The attacks occurred by targeting electronic systems that are controlled remotely and completely manage refrigerators, heating systems, and surveillance cameras, which allows any party to penetrate, control, and disable them.
Dr. Ammar told the BBC: “Artificial intelligence can write malicious code and modify it quickly to bypass anti-virus software.”
Retail chains rely on internet-connected refrigeration units and freezers to monitor temperature and perform maintenance remotely. Hackers gained access to the management software for these devices.
Ammar explains that attackers may have exploited the presence of outdated operating systems and software that lack security updates and plugged vulnerabilities, which made it easier to control them remotely due to the increasing reliance of online stores.
Dr. Ramadan warned that this attack may be the beginning of a broader war and open the door to attempts to penetrate more complex systems such as banks and financial payment systems to steal credit card data, or encrypt the entire systems to demand a financial ransom.
What are its goals?
The goals of electronic attacks are many, especially those that are carried out on a large scale and target institutions, financial networks, or infrastructure, including sending political messages, extortion, requesting ransom money, stealing data and information, or carrying out sabotage operations targeting companies or even governments, and angering citizens by affecting food security and raising fears.
Hacking networks aim to control devices, surveillance cameras, alarm systems, smart locks, thermostats and central heating devices, and prevent the main operator, such as grocery companies, from knowing the real data and disabling alarm devices, which leads to raising the temperature of refrigerators or tampering with other devices without anyone noticing what is happening, and the disaster eventually occurs with food spoilage or the occurrence of another operational problem such as an explosion of a device, for example.
The most dangerous thing here, according to Ramadan, is that the Canadian Center for Cybersecurity warned of an active cyber campaign that uses artificial intelligence tools to develop software targeting industrial control units exposed to the Internet, thus increasing the ability of attackers to disrupt vital operations.
Criminal networks can also penetrate the financial system and know customer data and credit cards while customers pay money. Surveillance cameras can watch them write the secret numbers of credit cards, and thus use the card data, numbers and passwords to withdraw money.
There is also a great danger to privacy in homes, as surveillance cameras can be controlled, record audio and video of what is happening in the home, and be used to blackmail people later.
There may be sabotage actors or countries supported by those aiming to disrupt supply chains and weaken confidence in infrastructure. The danger is not limited to food, but extends to energy and electricity facilities, where targeting control systems can disrupt operations, raise operating costs, and threaten the continuity of services, according to the cybersecurity specialist.
Can these attacks be confronted in the future?
