It was a May morning in Israel when employees at a large food production plant watched in horror as the office printers started spontaneously spitting out reams of threatening messages. Then, employees found malicious code on corporate computers designed to wipe away internal data. Finally, an engineer smelled smoke coming out of the industrial freezers, only to find broken compressors and badly spoiled food inside.
The company's operations ground to a halt for over a week while engineers waited for new parts to arrive from abroad. It was all the result of a targeted, multi-pronged cyberattack. "I do a lot of cyber incidents, but this is the kind of incident that I know will leave a mark on the people in charge," said Omri Segev Moyal, head of an Israeli incident response firm called Profero, which responded to the attack.
Based on forensic data and direct claims from the culprits, Moyal is confident Iranian military hackers who currently go by the name Cyber Isnaad Front, the same group linked to influence campaigns targeting U.S. elections in 2024, are behind the attack on the refrigeration systems. It was a destructive digital strike that took place during the waning days of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel when tensions were ratcheting up. In the months since, it appears to have become a trend.
Still unidentified hackers have targeted refrigeration controllers around the world. They have spoiled fresh produce and cost businesses time and money. These attacks have taken place on U.S. military bases in August, French supermarkets in October, and at food stores from small markets to big box stores like IKEA in countries including Sweden, Estonia, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium in early November.
"We're observing targeted attacks gradually built and practiced against Israel, tested in Europe and the U.S., and unleashed [now]," Moyal said in an interview with NPR. Across the globe, bad actors with access to AI are breaking into and taking control of the aging machines that run global critical infrastructure, from water pumps to cooling systems. That should put pressure on governments and companies to find solutions to long-standing security challenges before things get even worse, cybersecurity experts say.
"With great connectivity comes great responsibility," said Josh Corman, a former cybersecurity official with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who specializes in public safety. "As we connect industrial refrigeration to the Internet, we expose it to accidents and adversaries," Corman continued. "While these [attacks] hit food," he said, the next ones could go after "temperature sensitive drugs and laboratory materials." As early as March, hackers appear to have targeted a small chain of kosher grocery stores in Israel, according to avideo posted to social media.
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