Hackers hit French national blood bank (telegraph.co.uk)

41 pointsby blaze33an hour ago28 comments

kristjank 27 minutes ago

Not only freezers, but a lot of other appliances have become IoT-integrated to simplify inspection procedures. Instead of the health department looking at each freezer/smoke detector/gas detector/emergency floodlight individually, you can just present them with a report from your building's safety system. Older systems were mostly some industrial bus and are off-grid by default, but new ones are usually smarter, and as a result, IP-connected.

RobotToaster an hour ago

Fridges shouldn't be on the internet, doubly so when it's one storing vital medical supplies.

jasona123 18 minutes ago

Or if you really really want to, make sure it’s just a read/view only architecture?

account42 8 minutes ago

Yes, especially after this has now been happening again and again. First case can be excused as usual bad practices and lazyness. But it should have been a wake up call causing anyone else operating commercial freezers (or even other equipment) to review if/how they are connected to the Internet. Anyone getting hit now is maliciously incompetent.

Tryvrsakjo10 37 minutes ago

The advent of AI and its ability to find vulnerabilities so quickly is getting out of hand. Yesterday it was supermarket fridges now its fridges that store blood, they should never have been connected to the internet in the first place especially in these times with AI, but all of Europe needs to invest more into their cyber security systems they are anachronistic at this point.

holsta 29 minutes ago

> The advent of AI and its ability to find vulnerabilities so quickly

No AI needed. The supermarket controllers had software with guessable passwords and outdated nginx, both of which had patches out for a year.

Some hardware had reached end-of-live, and were never replaced.

All were connected directly on the internet instead of secure APNs or VPNs.

This is long-standing, basic management failure, and the fines should reflect that.

Tryvrsakjo10 25 minutes ago

So, the people in charge are either inept or just sleeping on the job especially for things that are so important to people's lives. cause it seems like everyday something else is getting hacked or exploited because of its vulnerabilities.

mainecoder 35 minutes ago

can someone please explain how they can heat the blood I understand they can stop the freezing but you cannot set the temperature of a refrigerator to a point where it literally heats the stuff inside since a refrigerator do not have the mean to warm objects inside it can only remove the heat.

rescbr 33 minutes ago

It's the defrost cycle.

Modern "frost-free" freezers have resistive heaters inside them.

kristjank 30 minutes ago

Seems like it's more of a walk in freezer situation and it can be controlled in either direction.

Ekaros 26 minutes ago

Basically understand that fridges and freezers work by making a surface, heat exchanger or some type of pipe cold. Being cold leads to moisture in ambient air condensing on that. And being usually below freezing to icing on it. Ice is not very good heat conductor. So you want occasionally get rid of it. Easiest way to achieve this is heating it. Simple resistive heaters are cheap and maluable for this.

Now if you can control these heaters you can pump up the temperature to quite high. And I imagine with certain uses cases actually emptying the whole thing heating it up to melt ice and then bringing temp back down is not that unreasonable process. Also allows keeping the temperature in very close range. For home appliances bit more temperature variation is acceptable.

marsknight 23 minutes ago

Le Canard Enchaîné is a satirical paper!

croisillon 17 minutes ago

yes but The Telegraph too runs invented stories

vixen99 5 minutes ago

Maybe they do but if you make allegations like this why not support them with evidence? That would put to rest any possible suggestion by folk who see ulterior motives in everything, that maybe you object to the Telegraph in general. No reason to suppose you do but that's how it is.

cricketfanatic 26 minutes ago

This is not looking good especially with so much red tape in Europe don’t know how they will deal with this…

elmer2 38 minutes ago

We need to have a French Revolution for hackers that do this. One clobbering, and they will think twice.

amelius 21 minutes ago

I see a new market in little VPN devices.

Ekaros 18 minutes ago

There is plenty of options already on the market. From specifically for remote use to simple features on routers.

Still, spending any money on basic security seems to be way too much these days.

ReptileMan 21 minutes ago

They had almost 3 weeks of warning since those attacks started. No excuses if they are not secured by now.

hhh 18 minutes ago

They have had over 60 days.

https://signalandsilence.substack.com/p/i-think-someone-hack...

smallnix 37 minutes ago

I don't understand the 110. The blood was.. boiling??

fithisux 44 minutes ago

It is either malicious incompetence or a red flag. No other explanation for me is satisfactory.

retinaros 42 minutes ago

we are a few attacks like this from a country interpreting it as a declaration of war. I have no doubts a developed country counter-intelligence cell can find which country is responsible for such a large scale attack. I wish they target countries like China instead of spineless france.

BSDobelix 36 minutes ago

>I wish they target countries like China instead of spineless france.

Because Chinese Life is less worth than "spineless" French? What is that disgusting worldview of yours? You know what a blood-bank is, right?

harvey9 34 minutes ago

I read it as meaning China is more likely to track down and prosecute the attackers. I use the term prosecute loosely.

dumbmrblah 22 minutes ago

They mean that China will respond in kind, rather than France, who may just wring their hands.