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PARIS: French investigators on Tuesday were hunting the hackers who seized control of cooling units at hundreds of supermarkets in a cyberattack that underlined the vulnerabilities of connected systems, with no group publicly claiming responsibility.\n<\/p>\n
The absence of a claim of responsibility by hacktivists or a ransom demand by cybercriminals has puzzled investigators, according to a source with knowledge of the probe. Typically, such groups tend to quickly seek to monetise their hacks or claim credit for them for political ends.\n<\/p>\n
The cyberattack, which manually overrode the temperatures at fridges in supermarket groups including Carrefour, Monoprix, Intermarche and Cooperative U, appears to have been easy to pull off, three cyber experts told Reuters.\n<\/p>\n
Staff at some Paris supermarkets \u2060threw boxes full \u2060of perished meat and frozen goods into giant trash containers on Tuesday. At least 350 supermarkets \u2014 a small fraction of the total number in France \u2014 were caught up in the strike.<\/p>\n
FIRM BLAMES OUTDATED SOFTWARE\n<\/p>\n
The affected fridges relied on software by Danish firm Danfoss.\n<\/p>\n
On Monday, Danfoss said many of the affected units had \u201creached end of life and no longer receive software or security updates\u201d or were \u201crunning outdated firmware.\u201d It said it had \u201cadvised customers to keep supported systems \u2060updated with the latest firmware and to migrate legacy systems to current-generation solutions.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The company declined further comment on Tuesday.\n<\/p>\n
The serious vulnerabilities present in older versions of Danfoss\u2019 firmware have been known for months.\n<\/p>\n
On August 9, cybersecurity firm Claroty detailed weaknesses \u2014 since patched \u2014 in the Danfoss AK-SM 800A controller that could have allowed intruders to bypass authentication and run code on compromised devices.<\/p>\n
\u2019BASIC CYBER HYGIENE\u2019\n<\/p>\n
Although the precise mechanism by which attackers compromised the refrigerators has not been publicly disclosed, cybersecurity experts said all signs pointed to a basic stunt enabled both by the failure to adopt Danfoss\u2019 updates and by exposing device interfaces to the Internet.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is about basic cyber hygiene,\u201d said Ken Munro, a partner at the British cybersecurity firm Pen Test \u2060Partners. \u201cGet it wrong and \u2060you get a smelly mess of defrosted food.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He said the well-known vulnerabilities meant the attackers were essentially pushing at an open door, something that meant the hack could easily be \u201ckids messing around.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this was a nation state, why affect only a subset of French fridges? There are plenty of other nations with fridges on the Internet,\u201d he said. \u201cNo ransom or demand suggests a lack of appreciation of the potential commercial losses that the fridge owners may experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n