The United States has warned of an ongoing cyber threat targeting industrial refrigeration systems, urging organisations that rely on cold storage to assume they could become targets of hackers.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the authorities said unidentified malicious cyber actors were exploiting vulnerabilities in internet-connected temperature monitoring and commercial refrigeration controllers at grocery retailers and cold storage facilities.
The warning follows a series of cyberattacks targeting commercial freezers in the United States and Europe.
Although the statement provided few details about the hackers behind the attacks, it indicated that the threat to commercial cold storage facilities remained ongoing.
“If successfully exploited, the actors could change the temperature and possibly cause physical impacts such as fire hazards, loss of inventory and changes to the service life of the system,” said the statement.
The warning was jointly issued by the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the departments of Health, Transportation and Agriculture.
FBI Cyber Branch Operations Director Brett Leatherman said the government was observing attacks on these systems across critical infrastructure sectors worldwide.
The authorities urged operators of industrial refrigeration control systems to disconnect their devices from the public internet, isolate them from corporate networks and install available software updates promptly.
At least three waves of cyberattacks have targeted commercial refrigerators and freezers in recent months.
It was reported last week that Pentagon investigators are treating a series of unexplained malfunctions affecting grocery store refrigeration units on US military bases in August as a cyberattack.
