Pentagon Investigates Freezer Failures at US Military Bases as Suspected Hack

Washington, United States. The Pentagon is investigating a series of unexplained freezer failures at American military bases in August as a suspected hack, according to four officials familiar with the matter. One of them said military investigators are in contact with French counterparts about a comparable cyberattack on commercial freezers that disrupted supermarkets in France earlier this month.

Status of the investigation

Reuters could not establish how far the Pentagon’s inquiry has progressed, or whether it has reached conclusions about the cause or those responsible. Asked about the matter, the Pentagon said a unit of Cyber Command, the military’s cyber force, was “working in close coordination with interagency and law enforcement partners.” It gave no further details.

The US Army Criminal Investigation Division said its Cyber Field Office is taking part and is working with French law enforcement to better understand the outages in Europe. The French Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Impact on military stores</h4)
A Reuters review of contemporaneous Facebook posts and website updates from the bases showed that the late August failures hit at least six commissaries, the on-base shops where military personnel buy food. In at least one case, the freezers did not merely stop working. Their temperatures were raised overnight, leaving large amounts of wilted or melted food by morning.

On August 26, the Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Facebook account said its freezer "went into defrost mode where it heated up all the food." The post added that the food was indeed spoiled.

How the story emerged

A recently created blog called Signal and Silence first reported the rogue freezer behavior and the possibility of cybersabotage on August 28. The newspaper Stars and Stripes reported the involvement of military investigators, while Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported their contacts with the French. Reuters said its account is the first to report that investigators are treating the incident as a suspected hack.

The French precedent

The cyberattack in France overrode the temperature controls of commercial cooling units in more than 350 establishments. Supermarkets had to clear spoiled products from their frozen food aisles.

If the US malfunctions are confirmed as a cyberattack, they would be another example of how vulnerable critical infrastructure, in this case cold storage, can be to hackers.