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Modern "smart" farm machinery is vulnerable to malicious hackers, leaving global supply chains exposed to risk, experts are warning. It is feared hackers could exploit flaws in agricultural hardware used to plant and harvest crops. Agricultural manufacturing giant John Deere says it is now working to fix any weak spots in its software.
A recent University of Cambridge report said automatic crop sprayers, drones and robotic harvesters could be hacked. The UK government and the FBI have warned that the threat of cyber-attacks is growing. John Deere said protecting customers, their machines and their data was a "top priority".
Smart technology is increasingly being used to make farms
more efficient and productive - for example, until now the labour-intensive
harvesting of delicate food crops such as asparagus has been beyond the reach
of machines.
The latest generation of agricultural robots use artificial
intelligence, minimising human involvement. They may help to plug a labour
shortage or increase yield, but fear of the inherent security risk is growing,
adding to concern over food-supply chains already threatened by the war in
Ukraine and Covid.
Chris Chavasse, the co-founder of Muddy Machines, which is
trialling an autonomous asparagus-harvesting robot called Sprout, said:
"There is a real risk that people anywhere in the world could try and take
control of these machines," he said. "to get them to do whatever
those people want, or just prevent them from operating."
He said potentially someone could drive Sprout into a hedge
or a ditch, or prevent it from working at all, so they are working with
security researchers to address any vulnerabilities.
Asparagus farming is unlikely to be a prime target, but Mr
Chavasse believes malicious hackers could threaten "mission critical"
agricultural infrastructure.
Even the largest companies aren't safe from cyber gangs.
Some use ransomware: malicious code that can encrypt data and lock systems.
Last year, one of the world's biggest meat processing
company, JBS, paid $11m in ransom to resolve a cyber attack. This month, top US
agriculture firm, AGCO, was hit by a ransomware attack that affected
production.
In April, a group of official governmental cyber security
authorities including ones from the UK, US and Australia, warned that Russian
state-sponsored hackers could target supply chains as a vital part of Western
national infrastructure.
One self-styled ethical hacker, who goes by the name Sick
Codes and asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC he had discovered weaknesses
in John Deere's software, which he had reported. He said he found a way to
access company information and machine data through websites and apps.
Sick Codes said he had also found vulnerabilities in systems
used by CNH Industrial, which manufactures New Holland Agriculture machinery.
He fears it's just a matter of time before a sophisticated hacker finds critical vulnerabilities and causes major disruption to already vulnerable food supply chains. Find more.
|Source: Online/SZK
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