Yes, especially after this has now been happening again and again. First case can be excused as usual bad practices and lazyness. But it should have been a wake up call causing anyone else operating commercial freezers (or even other equipment) to review if/how they are connected to the Internet. Anyone getting hit now is maliciously incompetent.
This is easily fixed with data diodes. I can see future industrial appliances and other critical IoT devices with embedded units. You use the read/write port for initial configuration then the diode for permanent monitoring, making it physical impossible to send data to the equipment.
And if you need to alter the initial settings, you do what? Also, your solution is negating one of the biggest benefits of remote control: less errors from tech on the ground.
Not only freezers, but a lot of other appliances have become IoT-integrated to simplify inspection procedures. Instead of the health department looking at each freezer/smoke detector/gas detector/emergency floodlight individually, you can just present them with a report from your building's safety system. Older systems were mostly some industrial bus and are off-grid by default, but new ones are usually smarter, and as a result, IP-connected.
You probably need admin/write concepts in order to change users, rotate keys, allow/disallow IP ranges, network setup, etc....
Still totally agree that there should be guardrails around the core functionality but it's easy to imagine that the thermostat would be something one would expect to be able to control once you implement all this remote functionality.
They could, but the person who's actually making the decision on which vendor to go with will most likely choose the ones that allow for remote management because they think it'll allow them to cut staffing
In the end the market will optimise for that guy's opinion, not the optimal solution
I imagine that, unfortunately, a lot are, but others might lack things like MFA at their trust boundaries
IT security is a pretty complex topic and a lot of businesses don't have the knowledge in-house to access the security of their own infrastructure
If you have no-one to actually patch your devices and architect your infrastructure, you'll probably end up with just asking the "geeky" student assistant to get it sorted. They'll throw it on the office WiFi, set the same user+password on all the devices and call it a day
In my experience, the vast majority of orgs have essentially no IT security
The advent of AI and its ability to find vulnerabilities so quickly is getting out of hand. Yesterday it was supermarket fridges now its fridges that store blood, they should never have been connected to the internet in the first place especially in these times with AI, but all of Europe needs to invest more into their cyber security systems they are anachronistic at this point.
So, the people in charge are either inept or just sleeping on the job especially for things that are so important to people's lives. cause it seems like everyday something else is getting hacked or exploited because of its vulnerabilities.
can someone please explain how they can heat the blood I understand they can stop the freezing but you cannot set the temperature of a refrigerator to a point where it literally heats the stuff inside since a refrigerator do not have the mean to warm objects inside it can only remove the heat.
Basically understand that fridges and freezers work by making a surface, heat exchanger or some type of pipe cold. Being cold leads to moisture in ambient air condensing on that. And being usually below freezing to icing on it. Ice is not very good heat conductor. So you want occasionally get rid of it. Easiest way to achieve this is heating it. Simple resistive heaters are cheap and maluable for this.
Now if you can control these heaters you can pump up the temperature to quite high. And I imagine with certain uses cases actually emptying the whole thing heating it up to melt ice and then bringing temp back down is not that unreasonable process. Also allows keeping the temperature in very close range. For home appliances bit more temperature variation is acceptable.
Maybe it could be combined with thermostats? E.g. one for "if it ever gets hotter than N degrees, disconnect all heating elements and trigger some alarm", another one for "if it's warmer than X for longer than Y minutes, do the same". That could also be to the network, too, it just would never read from it, or from anything electronically. Just bimetals closing or opening circuits, basically. How expensive would that even be? (If you planned for it from day 1 of the design I mean, not retrofitting things)
Yes, but not in the same way The Onion (or its French counter part Le Gorafi) are satirical.
Le Canard enchainé makes fun of people and institutions, but never makes stuff up, and are arguably more rigorous than most mainstream media outlet. They have a long history of exposing real scandals, albeit with a tongue-in-cheek manner.
Nope. It's a serious newspaper reporting on serious news. Usually with a vitriolic tone and wordplay, but it's absolutely not a satirical newspaper like the onion (the french equivalent would be le gorafi).
Maybe they do but if you make allegations like this why not support them with evidence? That would put to rest any possible suggestion by folk who see ulterior motives in everything, that maybe you object to the Telegraph in general. No reason to suppose you do but that's how it is.
The way I understand it, and someone please correct me if I’m wrong. Whoever hacked the devices send a command to increase temp to 110, but it never reached that number, instead it just reached the max. But the news story still reports it as if the blood literally started to boil to 110c
we are a few attacks like this from a country interpreting it as a declaration of war. I have no doubts a developed country counter-intelligence cell can find which country is responsible for such a large scale attack. I wish they target countries like China instead of spineless france.
51 comments:
Stop attaching everything to the internet...
Hard to imagine something more unethical than that.
Yeah. Whoever is responsible for this is sufficiently evil to warrant termination.
Fridges shouldn't be on the internet, doubly so when it's one storing vital medical supplies.
Yes, especially after this has now been happening again and again. First case can be excused as usual bad practices and lazyness. But it should have been a wake up call causing anyone else operating commercial freezers (or even other equipment) to review if/how they are connected to the Internet. Anyone getting hit now is maliciously incompetent.
Or if you really really want to, make sure it’s just a read/view only architecture?
Yes
The heat/cold switch should be a physical switch.
Centralized monitoring of thousands of refrigerators makes sense but it should be read only.
This is easily fixed with data diodes. I can see future industrial appliances and other critical IoT devices with embedded units. You use the read/write port for initial configuration then the diode for permanent monitoring, making it physical impossible to send data to the equipment.
And if you need to alter the initial settings, you do what? Also, your solution is negating one of the biggest benefits of remote control: less errors from tech on the ground.
Not only freezers, but a lot of other appliances have become IoT-integrated to simplify inspection procedures. Instead of the health department looking at each freezer/smoke detector/gas detector/emergency floodlight individually, you can just present them with a report from your building's safety system. Older systems were mostly some industrial bus and are off-grid by default, but new ones are usually smarter, and as a result, IP-connected.
What remote control mechanisms do detectors needs? Can't they just be broadcast only devices?
You probably need admin/write concepts in order to change users, rotate keys, allow/disallow IP ranges, network setup, etc....
Still totally agree that there should be guardrails around the core functionality but it's easy to imagine that the thermostat would be something one would expect to be able to control once you implement all this remote functionality.
They could, but the person who's actually making the decision on which vendor to go with will most likely choose the ones that allow for remote management because they think it'll allow them to cut staffing
In the end the market will optimise for that guy's opinion, not the optimal solution
Are these IoT devices actually directly on the internet, in the sense of exposing a port on a public IP address (perhaps behind NAT)?
Because you'd think it would work to just have them on a VPN, and then they aren't responsive to any non-authenticated internet traffic?
I imagine that, unfortunately, a lot are, but others might lack things like MFA at their trust boundaries
IT security is a pretty complex topic and a lot of businesses don't have the knowledge in-house to access the security of their own infrastructure
If you have no-one to actually patch your devices and architect your infrastructure, you'll probably end up with just asking the "geeky" student assistant to get it sorted. They'll throw it on the office WiFi, set the same user+password on all the devices and call it a day
In my experience, the vast majority of orgs have essentially no IT security
The advent of AI and its ability to find vulnerabilities so quickly is getting out of hand. Yesterday it was supermarket fridges now its fridges that store blood, they should never have been connected to the internet in the first place especially in these times with AI, but all of Europe needs to invest more into their cyber security systems they are anachronistic at this point.
> The advent of AI and its ability to find vulnerabilities so quickly
No AI needed. The supermarket controllers had software with guessable passwords and outdated nginx, both of which had patches out for a year.
Some hardware had reached end-of-live, and were never replaced.
All were connected directly on the internet instead of secure APNs or VPNs.
This is long-standing, basic management failure, and the fines should reflect that.
So, the people in charge are either inept or just sleeping on the job especially for things that are so important to people's lives. cause it seems like everyday something else is getting hacked or exploited because of its vulnerabilities.
can someone please explain how they can heat the blood I understand they can stop the freezing but you cannot set the temperature of a refrigerator to a point where it literally heats the stuff inside since a refrigerator do not have the mean to warm objects inside it can only remove the heat.
It's the defrost cycle.
Modern "frost-free" freezers have resistive heaters inside them.
Basically understand that fridges and freezers work by making a surface, heat exchanger or some type of pipe cold. Being cold leads to moisture in ambient air condensing on that. And being usually below freezing to icing on it. Ice is not very good heat conductor. So you want occasionally get rid of it. Easiest way to achieve this is heating it. Simple resistive heaters are cheap and maluable for this.
Now if you can control these heaters you can pump up the temperature to quite high. And I imagine with certain uses cases actually emptying the whole thing heating it up to melt ice and then bringing temp back down is not that unreasonable process. Also allows keeping the temperature in very close range. For home appliances bit more temperature variation is acceptable.
Maybe it could be combined with thermostats? E.g. one for "if it ever gets hotter than N degrees, disconnect all heating elements and trigger some alarm", another one for "if it's warmer than X for longer than Y minutes, do the same". That could also be to the network, too, it just would never read from it, or from anything electronically. Just bimetals closing or opening circuits, basically. How expensive would that even be? (If you planned for it from day 1 of the design I mean, not retrofitting things)
Seems like it's more of a walk in freezer situation and it can be controlled in either direction.
We need to have a French Revolution for hackers that do this. One clobbering, and they will think twice.
Only if you can find them. And only if they are in a country where you can get them.
Agree. There should be a worldwide effort against them by all governments everywhere.
How low must one go to do such a thing as attacking a blood bank? Of course, some of these low people are also low life governments.
Le Canard Enchaîné is a satirical paper!
Yes, but not in the same way The Onion (or its French counter part Le Gorafi) are satirical.
Le Canard enchainé makes fun of people and institutions, but never makes stuff up, and are arguably more rigorous than most mainstream media outlet. They have a long history of exposing real scandals, albeit with a tongue-in-cheek manner.
Nope. It's a serious newspaper reporting on serious news. Usually with a vitriolic tone and wordplay, but it's absolutely not a satirical newspaper like the onion (the french equivalent would be le gorafi).
Same news other serious outlet:
[1]: https://www.franceinfo.fr/internet/securite-sur-internet/cyb...
Sounds similar to the UK's Private Eye.
yes but The Telegraph too runs invented stories
Maybe they do but if you make allegations like this why not support them with evidence? That would put to rest any possible suggestion by folk who see ulterior motives in everything, that maybe you object to the Telegraph in general. No reason to suppose you do but that's how it is.
I see a new market in little VPN devices.
There is plenty of options already on the market. From specifically for remote use to simple features on routers.
Still, spending any money on basic security seems to be way too much these days.
I don't understand the 110. The blood was.. boiling??
The way I understand it, and someone please correct me if I’m wrong. Whoever hacked the devices send a command to increase temp to 110, but it never reached that number, instead it just reached the max. But the news story still reports it as if the blood literally started to boil to 110c
They had almost 3 weeks of warning since those attacks started. No excuses if they are not secured by now.
They have had over 60 days.
https://signalandsilence.substack.com/p/i-think-someone-hack...
This is out there!
It is either malicious incompetence or a red flag. No other explanation for me is satisfactory.
we are a few attacks like this from a country interpreting it as a declaration of war. I have no doubts a developed country counter-intelligence cell can find which country is responsible for such a large scale attack. I wish they target countries like China instead of spineless france.
So if the attack comes from groups hosted in <checks notes> Israel, Russia or some SEA proxy of China, what does France do? Nuke the country?
Spineless or beholden? That is the question.
>I wish they target countries like China instead of spineless france.
Because Chinese Life is less worth than "spineless" French? What is that disgusting worldview of yours? You know what a blood-bank is, right?
I read it as meaning China is more likely to track down and prosecute the attackers. I use the term prosecute loosely.
They mean that China will respond in kind, rather than France, who may just wring their hands.
This is not looking good especially with so much red tape in Europe don’t know how they will deal with this…
The article states there was no impact on stored products, because the attack was detected early.
I'm not sure why you're talking about red tape, is that really related to the article?
Standard reaction for anything Euro related.
I'd say it's half of one, since it doesn't mention nuclear power.