Feds Warn Your Freezer May Not be Safe from a Cyberattack

Well, hopefully, not YOUR personal freezer. Unless, of course, if it is connected to the Internet.

The sub title is that the FBI and other agencies issued a warning on this subject.

Believe it or not (you should), attackers are hacking freezers all over Europe. This includes freezers at military bases, ones in grocery stores and even at blood banks.

Why?

Because for years, people have chosen not to spend the time and money needed to protect their Internet of Things devices because, well, why would anyone want to hack my freezer. They also thought hacking your freezer was hard.

Well, it used to be hard. Not anymore. So now, grocery stores, among others, are dealing with that choice they made and are having to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) worth of refrigerated or frozen food. And there is no silver bullet to fixing this (actually there is, but companies don’t like the fix).

The short term fix is to disconnect your freezers (only an example) – all of your Internet of Things devices – FROM THE INTERNET. Hackers can’t hack what they cannot connect to. That will give you some time to figure out what the right fix is.

And, yes, that may mean that you have to walk over to that freezer to see what the temperature is. While that is inconvenient, many stores have also figured out that it is inconvenient to have to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars of food.

The Chinese and North Korean hackers are thrilled that you didn’t think security was important. Their goal is to create fear and chaos.

The problem for you may be that your freezer is old and the manufacturer may no longer support it. In fact, at least in the United States, manufacturers mostly have no duty to even offer patches. For some companies, the easy way out is to state that the freezer you bought two years ago is no longer supported – end of life – and so they aren’t going to create a patch. It is called a marketing technique to get you to buy a new one.

While I keep referring to freezers, that is really just a place holder for all Internet connected devices. The key point to remember is that while it USED TO BE hard to hack these devices, with AI, it is no longer hard to do.

So you can, as I often say, choose CONVENIENCE or SECURITY, but the Chinese and North Koreans, among others, are pointing out that you may want to rethink that strategy.

If you need assistance in protecting your castle, please contact us.

Credit: Tech Crunch

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