CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Maybe we don’t want “smart” things.
We’re told that a smart house is a cool thing. Turning the lights on and off before you get home. Adjusting the heat and air conditioning through an app on your phone. What could be better than that?
Well, consider what just happened in France.
Smart refrigerators are a big thing there – especially in places that sell food. Supermarkets and convenience stores have their frozen food aisles connected to the internet. Keeping the food at the right temperature is monitored and adjusted online.
That’s all well and good until a group of hackers worked their way into the software. A cyberattack lined to groups in Iran was able to turn off the refrigeration. Four large food sellers – two grocery store chains, a group of convenience stores, and a group of co-op markets had all of their food spoiled. In many French cities there are food shortages. The loss of merchandise will be in the 10s of millions of dollars.
Think about this for a moment. The programming that controlled the refrigeration was a soft target. No double encryption or secret passwords. Now consider the unlimited number of soft targets in the United States. What if hackers got into the software that trucking companies use, and kills all the engines. What if the software the regulates our water supply is compromised. Or our gas pumps. Or the cash registers in retail operations. Or the online medical records – oh, actually that’s already happened.
At what point do we consider attacks like this acts of war? Hackers can only accomplish this with state-level support.
What is the right response?
Systems that we are completely dependent on are vulnerable and unprotected.
Chris Conley
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