William Altman, Director of Cyber Threat Intelligence Services at CyberCube, comments on the 2nd wave of cyber-attacks on supermarket fridges and freezers: "Monday’s attacks reached supermarkets and food shops in at least six countries, including Belgium, Ireland, Sweden and Estonia, three weeks after hundreds of French stores lost their refrigerated stock.
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The stores attacked belong to unrelated chains, linked solely by a class of remotely managed refrigeration controller. Contractors look after these controllers remotely across many sites, and an attacker who infiltrates that remote access has the same reach. So, a single weakness is capable of producing losses at many insureds on the same night. This is the accumulation risk we warned about after the French attacks. Nobody has asked for a ransom, which suggests the point was disruption. For modelling, that means the loss depends on how many controllers sit within an attacker’s reach and the value of the stock each one keeps cold."
The losses are physical: spoiled stock this week and in France, damaged equipment and isolated fires. Claims like these sit awkwardly between property and cyber wordings, and they will show whether cyber exclusions in property policies hold up as written. Several of the stores hit on Monday relied on an outside refrigeration contractor working beyond the chain’s own network, so the retailer carries the loss while someone else manages the controller. The exposure won’t close quickly. Many of these controllers no longer receive security updates, and replacing one is a job for engineers in the store, with chilled stock to protect while they work. Censys found that in ten of the twelve countries it charted, more than 60% of internet-facing Danfoss StoreView panels ran software older than the patched release. Insurers of food retail and cold-chain risks need to be asking who maintains these controllers and how they’re reached remotely."
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