WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) – The Pentagon is treating the wave of mysterious failures in freezers — which spoiled food at U.S. military bases in August — as a suspected cyberattack, according to four people familiar with the matter.
One of the officials said that military investigators were in contact with their French counterparts regarding a cyberattack similar to commercial freezers that caused disruptions in supermarkets in that country earlier this month.
Reuters was unable to determine at what stage the Pentagon’s investigation stood or whether any conclusions had been reached about what happened or who might be responsible. When asked about the investigation, the Pentagon said that a unit of Cyber Command — the military’s cyber force — was “working in close coordination with interagency partners and security forces.” No further details were provided.
The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division said its Cyber Field Office was involved in the investigation and that it was working with the French authorities to better understand “the cooling-system failures in Europe.”
The outages in late August in the United States affected at least six commissaries — stores on bases where service members buy their food — according to a Reuters analysis of contemporaneous Facebook posts and updates on base websites. In at least one case, the freezers did not simply stop functioning; the temperatures of the refrigeration units rose drastically overnight, resulting in mountains of wilted or melted food by morning.
Fort Huachuca’s Facebook page in Arizona explained on August 26 that its freezer had “entered defrost mode, which heated all the food. Believe us when we say they were ‘spoiled’.”
The wave of abnormal freezer behavior and the possibility of cyber sabotage were first reported on August 28 by a newly created blog called Signal and Silence. The involvement of military investigators and their contacts with the French were reported by Stars and Stripes and the British Daily Telegraph, respectively. The news that investigators were treating the incident as a suspected cyberattack is being reported here for the first time.
The French Embassy in Washington said it would not comment.
DAMAGED FRENCH FREEZERS
If it is confirmed that this was a cyberattack, the failures in the refrigerators would be another example of how critical infrastructure — in this case, freezer cabinets — can be vulnerable to hackers.
The cyberattack on French freezers disabled temperature controls in commercial refrigeration units in more than 350 establishments, leading to dramatic scenes, with the supermarket frozen-food aisles being emptied of spoiled merchandise.
The French attack consisted of raising the temperature inside the units, rather than simply turning them off, in a manner similar to what happened at Fort Huachuca, in Arizona. In some French refrigeration units, the temperature was raised to such a degree that they caught fire. The total costs of the French attack could reach tens of millions of euros nationwide, according to a supermarket owner earlier this month.
The cyberattack in France appears to have been easy to execute, according to experts previously cited by Reuters. Danish company Danfoss, whose controllers operated many of the affected units, said that many of the devices were obsolete or running outdated firmware, which may have facilitated hackers’ intrusion. Reuters could not determine whether Danfoss freezer controllers or those of any other brand were in use at the affected U.S. bases. Danfoss did not respond to requests for comment.
