The intitial investigation is in.
In a “bizarre and unprecedented” cyber-attack, hackers had remotely overridden the temperature settings on thousands of freezers, fridges and chiller cabinets pushing them from as low as -27C (-16.6F) to well over 50C (122F).
If shop managers first assumed it was an isolated failure, it soon became clear up to 700 stores – including those from the Intermarché, Coopérative U, Carrefour, Leclerc and Monoprix chains along with a number of smaller independent shops – had been victims of a cyber-attack.
The hackers had pirated the controllers supplied by the Danish company Danfoss that controls the freezers and fridges. Most supermarket cold aisles are connected to the internet to allow remote maintenance and alerts for system failures. Initial investigations suggest the hackers disabled alarm systems before tampering with the thermostats, or extended the defrost programme by several hours to avoid triggering alarms.
Danfoss said it had identified security flaws last year and had “long recommended” that customers install updates or replace obsolete unsupported systems. The affected refrigeration units were “running outdated firmware”, it said. In the days following the first wave of attacks, France’s cyber-attack alert centre ANSSI confirmed supermarkets using controllers from two other companies were also targeted.
Dead on perspective.
I’ve worked for that company, it was all “we can react in a moments notice on our smart phones” and other BS.
Then we got a real customer, the first thing out of their mouth was "what happens if a bad player gets access to one of those “smart” phones?
*crickets
I was there for sales support. aka a data center monkey (engineer), I was there to answer “can we do that?” from sales.
So blank stares follow from sales, sales looks at me to answer. I have been bitching that this is YUGE security hole for the last 2 years and I can’t answer w/o making the company look bad.
Then I realize why I’m there, I’m the escape goat (scapegoat). I sputter we are all patched up to the latest, we follow the tech bulletins (aka we are reactionary NOT proactive, no TQL another thing I bitched about). I’m trying to defend the undefendable, I wanted a walled system. You have to VPN in to see anything, no smart devices, not “lets everyone have access system” party.
The sale tanked, I got blamed, I said GFY and quit. Got another gig but played dumb as it was easier day to day to let another chump like me learn a lesson. Take the pay check and go home.
Now I live by: “Not my monkeys, not my circus”
And don’t get me going on Grafana… Let “church” up and make pretty data w/ another layer of M&C I have to set parameters too for the bosses to “oh ahh” over for some stuff shirt middle manager in a corn blue tie…
So you can see why I hate “smart” anything.