SEATTLE, Wash. — The FBI is warning companies and organizations that it is seeing an increasing threat of hackers getting into operational systems.
This comes after a recent attack in the United Kingdom that shut down a grocery store’s refrigeration systems, spoiling all the food.
You can read more about those attacks here.
FBI Seattle Special Agent in Charge Mike Herrington tells us they are putting out a warning now to educate people.
“This is something that we have been seeing more and more over the past few years and have been very concerned about,” Herrington said.
He said the systems keeping the world turning are under fire. This includes grocery store refrigeration systems, blood bank cooling systems, the technology that operates dams keeping water back from flooding cities, or even HVAC systems in large buildings. Herrington said if someone can get into something to shut it off, like an alarm system, they will.
Herrington tells us many companies have operational systems that were created decades ago, meaning they weren’t built to fight against today’s hackers and their advanced techniques.
“A lot of this will not have security built in and are difficult to configure properly if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing and not following the vendor’s best practices,” Herrington said.
He recommends finding weak links in your systems, then taking them offline or isolating them to their own network. He tells us most companies have a lot of their systems on online platforms when they don’t actually need to be, which puts them at a high threat level.
“They (hackers) will just scan the internet for anything that is this type of device, this specific programmable logic controller that we know we have an exploit for, and they just look for unpatched systems,” Herrington said.
He tells us time and time again they are seeing operational technology hacks that could indirectly take lives, cause injury, or significant financial damages.
In one example, Herrington said someone hacked into a dam and tried to tamper with the settings that hold the water in place.
“The systems were actually not physically connected to the dam at the time that they were hacked, but this is the sort of thing we’re concerned about where if they could control the gates of a dam they could really do some damage with that,” Herrington said.
Herrington tells us hackers likely won’t target individual households, but try to target larger-scale options instead.
For more information on this increasing type of threat or more on how to protect your organization, click here.