We are worried, it happened in several European countries and it is presumably a coordinated initiative at European level by someone who has a clear hostility content. This was stated by the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, who spoke about the cyber attack on the cold chain of supermarkets today in Turin for the provincial committee for public order and safety. "Our technicians are at work," he added, both from the cybersecurity agency and the experts from the postal police. We hope to see things clearly in a short time.
From the first investigations it emerges that in Italy the impact of the attacks is currently highly limited: few commercial units were affected, compared to the thousands present throughout the national territory, mostly still equipped with obsolete security systems, with interfaces exposed directly on the Internet and deficiencies in the authentication mechanisms. Most of the distribution chain is instead equipped with updated protection systems, capable of repelling malicious intrusions. Thus a note from Palazzo Chigi after the meeting of the undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano together with the minister Francesco Lollobrigida with the leaders of the services and the National Cybersecurity Agency.
The postal police have launched investigations to shed light on the attacks. According to what we learn, there are currently two episodes and they occurred in Sicily and Emilia Romagna.
In at least five Conad brand stores there have been hacking attacks on the refrigeration systems of the frozen counters. Conad's national external relations service confirms that out of 3,300 stores in Italy, hacker attacks occurred in two stores in Veneto and three in Sicily, in Catania, Messina and Palermo. The incidents were immediately reported to the postal police of the affected areas. Fortunately, they add from the large-scale retail cooperative society, we intervened in time and did not suffer serious losses of goods. At the moment it is impossible to quantify the damage, but we have not thrown anything away thanks to the timely interventions of the IT technicians to stem the problem. The cyberattack, which occurred around 4 in the morning yesterday, targeted the systems for monitoring the temperature of frozen counters, raising the temperature to the point of overheating the environment where the goods are stored and causing them to deteriorate.
The entire frozen food counter was emptied and disposed of, as was the poultry counter, because the cold rooms were compromised: this is the damage reported in a Conad supermarket in the center of Palermo following the hacker attack, which forced the management to work overtime to restock the store as quickly as possible. We became aware of the cyber-attack yesterday morning because the alarm had not been triggered during the night, said Mario Giannitto, area manager of the Conad Redenza Group. The supermarket manager, arriving on site, found that the temperatures were not suitable from the cell displays and so the workers began to empty them, added Giannitto. His group, he assured, has excellent security levels, but in this case it was an attack never seen before. In particular, the hackers connected to our VPN and changed the temperature set point and the vaporizers, which should maintain temperatures between minus 18 and minus 25 degrees, were set to 50 degrees. Regarding the damage, a rough estimate is that it exceeds thousands of euros, if we consider the Conad point in Palermo, three other stores in the Catania area and one in Ragusa belonging to Coop Gruppo Radenza which suffered the cyber-attack.
A supermarket in Sassari ended up under attack by hackers during the night, who struck in the manner known after the numerous episodes of the last few days in Europe and Italy. In the Viro chain market, in Piazza Mazzotti, in the historic center of the city, the refrigerated counters were targeted, with the temperature being increased to around 15 degrees, compromising the correct conservation of food. The Sassari postal police are investigating the episode.
The four lines of action against cyber attacks, from monitoring to prevention
The government in all its aspects will continue to act along four lines: monitoring and analysis of the threat, an activity which has already started months ago; constant dialogue with suppliers and sellers of the food supply chain; identification and timely notification of exposed subjects; large-scale dissemination of preventive communications and indications for risk mitigation in the sectors concerned. Thus Palazzo Chigi said in a note at the end of the meeting with Undersecretary Mantovano and Minister Lollobrigida, in which the director of the National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN) and the directors of the intelligence agencies participated, following the hacker attacks that are affecting some commercial refrigeration systems in Europe.
Hacker attacks on refrigerators in Europe, the GB food supply chain also affected
The wave of cyberattacks on supermarket refrigerators in Europe has also had limited repercussions on the UK food supply chain. The National Center for Cyber Security (NCSC) has confirmed that in a couple of cases hackers have managed to exploit flaws in the systems of British companies. The head of the centre, Richard Horne, explained to the BBC that he had worked all night to warn the businesses most at risk. Among those affected are some of the over 300 members of Aims, the organization of independent meat suppliers, although they did not suffer any particular damage. Presenting the NCSC's annual report, Horne said the country risks an unprecedented increase in cyber incidents in the coming months. By 2028, it is very likely that China, Russia and other states will routinely use AI-based cyber tools to achieve their geopolitical objectives, with the UK exposed to increasingly widespread and rapid sophisticated attacks, the report says.
Fridge on tilt in a business in Abruzzo. President Fiesa: They can hit us at any time
Refrigerators and freezers which, in the middle of the night, reached 40 degrees: even in Abruzzo the remote management systems of supermarket refrigeration systems are under attack by hackers. One of the incidents occurred in the night between Sunday and Monday in Silvi Marina, in the Teramo area, to the detriment of a commercial business that is part of the group owned by Daniele Erasmi, president of regional Confesercenti and national president of Fiesa, the Italian Federation of food specialist merchants. The hackers went into action around 3am and set the temperature of the system, which manages freezers and refrigerators, to 150 degrees, a level unattainable for the appliances. However, actual temperatures reached 40 degrees. The software immediately triggered the alarm due to the anomalies and after a few hours, around 7am, the technicians intervened. The outages affected all the refrigerators and freezers in the supermarket, creating problems for a wide range of products, from frozen foods to meat. It is clear that there is a problem and they have shown us that we are vulnerable, that they can attack us in any way and at any time, comments Erasmi to ANSA. Nobody thought that supermarkets could be hit in this way, yet it happened. This makes us understand how easily it is possible to hit us, mess up the systems and create problems for us.
