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The story
A freezer used to store blood products in France was hijacked by hackers, who rewrote its temperature setting from the normal −30°C to 110°C, according to a report from an overseas cybersecurity trade outlet. Temperature control is a lifeline for blood products used in transfusions — if the setting goes haywire, everything in storage can become unusable. When the report was reposted to the overseas forum Lemmy, it drew a wave of shock that even medical equipment is hooked up to the internet these days, along with pointed questions about why such devices are designed to be remotely controllable in the first place.
Hackers hijacked a French blood plasma freezer and changed its temperature setting from −30°C to 110°C
Source: cybersecuritynews.com / Read the original article here
What people said
Background and key points of this discussion
Medical facility freezers and monitoring equipment are connected to the internet for good reason — remote temperature monitoring and automatic alerts when something goes wrong. But if outside parties can rewrite those settings, as happened here, the result can be every bit as damaging as physical sabotage. Commenters in the thread were split between those who think such equipment shouldn’t be networked at all, and those who think it’s fine to keep it connected as long as it’s locked to read-only. The tendency for IoT devices in healthcare and infrastructure to have updates deprioritized — leaving vulnerabilities unpatched for long stretches — has also been flagged in past cases of hacked supermarket freezers. It’s worth noting that, as of this report, the perpetrator and motive have not been identified, so this remains speculation.
*This article is excerpted and freely translated by our editorial team from a thread on the overseas forum Lemmy c/europe, “Hackers Hijacked French Blood Plasma Freezers, Changing Temperature Settings From −30°C to 110°C.” Responsibility for the translation rests with this site.
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