Cyber security: Global food supply chain at risk from malicious hackers

Image source, Claire Marshall

Global supply chains are at risk because modern smart farm machinery is vulnerable to malicious hackers.

It is feared that hackers could exploit flaws in agricultural hardware.

John Deere, one of the world's largest agricultural manufacturers, says it is working to fix any weak spots.

Automatic crop sprayers, drones and robotic harvesters could be hacked according to a recent University of Cambridge report.

The threat of cyber- attacks is growing, according to the UK government and the FBI.

John Deere said protecting their machines and their data was their top priority.

Image source, Claire Marshall

For example, until now the labour-intensive harvesting of delicate food crops such as asparagus has been beyond the reach of machines.

Artificial intelligence is used in the latest generation of agricultural robots. 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.

The co-founder of Muddy Machines, which is trialling an asparagus-harvesting robot called Sprout, said there is a risk that people anywhere in the world could try and take control of these machines.

He said they are working with security researchers to address any vulnerabilities that could allow someone to drive Sprout into a hedge or ditch.

Image source, Claire Marshall

Asparagus farming is unlikely to be a prime target, but Mr Chavasse believes malicious hackers could threaten agricultural infrastructure.

Even the largest companies are not safe from cyber gangs. Some people use a type of malicious code that can be locked up.

One of the world's biggest meat processing company paid $11 million in a cyber attack to get it over with. AGCO, a top US agriculture firm, was hit by a ransomware attack this month.

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 that he had discovered weaknesses in John Deere's software. He said he was able to access company information through websites and apps.

Sick Codes said he found vulnerabilities in the systems used by CNH Industrial.

He fears that a hacker will find critical vulnerabilities and cause a major disruption to the food supply chains.

stalling something during the most important times is what we are trying to prevent. You can imagine what would happen if you can't move your tractor or pick or take the crop out of the ground. He said that it just stops.

Image source, Claire Marshall

James Johnson, John Deere's global chief information security officer, told the BBC that the company had been talking to ethical hackers about vulnerabilities they had found.

He said those found so far did not pose a threat to customers or machines.

No company, including John Deere, is immune to vulnerabilities, but we are committed to safeguard our customers and the role they play in the global food supply chain.

CNH Industrial takes security very seriously and continuously invests in improving it.

Benjamin Turner, chief operating officer at Agrimetrics, one of four UK government-backed agri-tech centres of agricultural innovation, sad: "Hacking into one tractor, you can upset a farmer and maybe damage their profitability for a season."

You can affect the yield in whole areas of the country by hacking into a fleet of tractors.

Even everyday farm machinery uses systems that are vulnerable.

Richard Heady, a beef and arable farmer in Buckinghamshire who has a tractor that can be steered by a gps positioning system, said that everything is so interwoven now that it can stop deliveries coming to us or stop the tractor from moving at all. If we are in a busy harvesting window, we cannot just have tractor sitting around.

If we get a cyber attack, we could see the same thing as we have seen empty shelves because of Covid.

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