Hackers Kinda Like to Eat

The session argues that food supply depends on water, power, farm technology and hospitals, and that all of them are becoming more internet-connected. The two presenters, one from an incident response firm and one from a life sciences information sharing group, open with a 2023 ransomware attack on a UK water company that served over a million people. The attackers shifted toward data extortion, and their claims of reaching operational systems were never confirmed.

They then describe a 2023 campaign by a state-linked group that reached about ten US water facilities through internet-exposed industrial controllers protected by weak or default passwords. The group defaced the devices with political messages instead of disrupting service. Remotely operated center pivot irrigation systems were presented as a similar exposure, and nitrate contamination was used to show how an upset in water quality can strain hospitals. The talk also raised the possibility that a conflict could disrupt ports, cold storage and power, with Russian wiper attacks in Ukraine as a reference point.

For practitioners, the advice centers on removing industrial devices from the internet, separating operational networks from IT, changing default credentials, and keeping an accurate asset inventory that includes forgotten systems. Organizations should keep incident response contacts and out-of-band communication current, rehearse with tabletop exercises, maintain manual fallbacks, and share indicators through sector groups. The closing section moved to household preparedness, covering food and water stockpiles, local production, neighbour networks and paper maps.