Cyber-attacks on European supermarkets reach Portugal: seven Intermarché stores affected
A series of cyber-attacks on refrigeration systems has affected supermarkets in several European countries, including seven Intermarché stores in Portugal.
Attacks on refrigeration systems expose vulnerabilities across Europe and Portugal
A series of cyber-attacks has affected dozens of European supermarkets in the past week, reaching Portugal as well, where seven Intermarché stores have been hit. According to CNN Portugal, the incidents have reignited debate among experts about the growing cybersecurity threat and the role of artificial intelligence in exploiting security flaws.
Groupe Mousquetaires confirmed the situation to SIC Notícias: "Incidents were identified relating to a cyber-attack on seven Intermarché stores in Portugal, which was targeted at an external service provider responsible for managing the refrigeration systems." Beyond Portugal, the situation has been recorded by companies in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and France.
Vulnerabilities "waiting to be exploited"
Richard Horne, director of the National Cyber Security Centre of the United Kingdom (NCSC), warned of the scale of the problem. "There are so many vulnerabilities out there that you could say they are waiting to be exploited," he said, cited by the Guardian. "The most serious risk we face in the short term is simply a huge increase in the volume of incidents."
Experts point to a common factor in these attacks: attackers take advantage of old equipment that does not receive security updates. "These attackers are, for the most part, opportunists," says Samuli Bergström, vice-president of Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure, also cited by the British newspaper. "When they see something that is exposed to the Internet, it is likely they will attack it. If you have a device connected to the Internet, you must assume it will be attacked, sooner or later."
AI as a new weapon of attack
In the months preceding these incidents, major artificial intelligence companies publicly demonstrated that their models are capable of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in computer systems. In July, OpenAI was the first to disclose that an AI model could carry out cyber-attacks under certain conditions. Models from Anthropic and Google demonstrated similar capabilities shortly afterwards.
In October, a security flaw was also revealed in the PHP programming language — used by around 70 per cent of websites — which could enable large-scale attacks. Several websites were taken offline to prevent risks.
The attacks were not limited to refrigeration systems. In Ukraine, an attack on the emergency alert system sent citizens a false message about the risk of a nuclear explosion: "Hello, a nuclear explosion is about to occur throughout Ukraine," the alert said.
"Wuhan moment" or passing wave?
Azeem Azhar, technology sector entrepreneur, compared in a text published on the Substack platform the current advance of artificial intelligence technologies to the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, using the phrase "Wuhan moment". "It is as if we were back in January 2020," he wrote. "Something is spreading rapidly. Most people still have not noticed, and those who have are worried."
Azhar also cited Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare, who told Reuters that "we are going to go through a few years in which, every week, we are going to have the feeling that the sky is falling". Nevertheless, Azhar believes that "the Internet that will emerge on the other side will be more secure and less open than the one we have built".
Not all experts share this view. Ciaran Martin, first chief executive of the NCSC, told the Guardian that there have been similar moments in the past without lasting structural consequences. "It is a difficult phase, but it is not something without precedent. The idea that we are living a 'Wuhan moment' is not true. We are going through one of those waves of incidents that occur every few years."
Tal Be'ery, another expert cited by the Guardian, adds that AI models are capable of identifying vulnerabilities that exist on the Internet, but that this has not translated into a proportional increase in the number of attacks nor into more lucrative actions for hackers. Nevertheless, in recent weeks, dozens of companies in several countries have been affected by attacks on refrigeration systems — a sign, for many, that the cyber threat continues to grow.
Source: CNN Portugal