European supermarkets that failed to act after French freezer attack are now feeling the heat

Publisher excerpt From CSO Online

Just a couple of weeks after a cyberattack on French supermarket refrigeration systems resulted in spoiled food, and even some fires, retailers in Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia were hit with nearly-identical attacks on Monday. The mid-October attack prompted an advisory from the French Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-FR) recommending that organizations disconnect any refrigeration control systems with public IP addresses from the internet, and to reconnect them via a secure VPN only after verifying the configuration and, if necessary, restoring factory defaults. In an emergency, the advisory suggested, organizations could simply filter connections to allow only the IP addresses of their refrigeration suppliers or service providers to connect, but this should not be a long-term solution. The Monday attack, like the one in October, “resulted in sudden changes in the temperatures of their fridges and freezers,” according to a Bloomberg report, which confirmed incidents with impacted retailers, including Carrefour, Spar, and Ahold Delhaize. No group has as yet claimed to be behind the attacks. Delay understandable Analysts and consultants said the lack of an immediate response to the initial refrigeration attacks is understandable, given the complex nature of the systems and the multiple vendors who typically manage such systems for major retailers. Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Katell Thielemann said that although the impacted European retailer…

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