cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/37820383

Note: “OT” means “operational technology” and basically means infrastructure and industrial IoT, to differentiate it from “normal” IT.

This adresses the manipulations of supermarket refrigerators in France, Belgium, Ireland, Germany and a few more countries - from a technical side, and explains which pressures have shaped things to become like that.

In short, it is a much deeper, pervasive, and partly more difficult problem. And one that was not only foreseeable, but also foreseen and warned about.

Over the last ten years, we’ve lived through the rapid adoption of remote connectivity in industrial environments around the world.

[…]

Now that we understand the chaos of connectivity in modern industrial environments, we can talk about what’s getting hacked right now, and why. Why water? Why refrigerators?

A few unfortunate, incredibly predictable factors have led us here, and my colleagues and I have been screaming about them for years: [ …]

[…]

Fixing the vulnerability isn’t easy, even if the organisation is aware of it. Industrial systems have long lifecycles, sometimes 10 to 30 years. They’re engineered and tested by the OEM to work in a very specific technology stack and topology. Any alteration can, at best, disrupt the process and, at worst, lead to injury or death. Either outcome can be far more damaging than a casual hacker. Because of these lifecycles, and the inability to replace systems, I still deal with Windows 2000, CE, and XP every week. They can’t be removed from production or modified without express authorisation from the OEM and engineers, plus a significant outage and testing window.