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As Russia’s aggression laid bare the critical role of Ukrainian agricultural output in the global food supply chain, cyber-attacks are likely to follow, according to cyber security experts.
The invasion, which began on 24 February, has had dramatic consequences regarding food security. Given the major role both Ukraine and Russia have in agri-food world trade, the war has resulted in a hike in food prices, with the risk of famine looming large in the Global South. Control over the passage of cargo ships through Ukraine’s ports has quickly become a source of political leverage for the Russians.
However: more disruption of Ukraine’s agricultural output may be yet to come. Due to the ongoing conflict exposing the magnitude of the ripple effects of these disruptions, the sector is catching the attention of cyber threat actors, Cisco’s Talos Intelligence Group warned.
According to the technology company, agricultural production is particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks due to its low cyber defences, international dependencies and limited downtime tolerance. The last element is particularly relevant for ransomware attacks, whereby hackers take over an asset and only give it back in exchange for a ransom.
Time pressure and sensitivity of the compromise assets are weaponised to exert pressure on the organisation to pay the ransom and, as such, malicious actors commonly target critical infrastructures such as hospitals and oil pipelines, at particularly vulnerable moments: attacks against the healthcare systems went up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The same is likely to happen with agriculture as the food crisis unfolds. Ukraine on its own accounts for 10% of global agricultural output.
“Fragility creates opportunity,” Joe Marshall, a senior security strategist at Cisco, told EURACTIV. Marshall stressed that, while there has not yet been a vertical attack on the agricultural sector per se, agriculture has suffered from spillovers from related sectors.
Last April, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued an alert stressing that hackers have been actively targeting agri-food businesses during the harvest and planting seasons, periods which are hugely time-intolerant, as even a few days of disruptions can lead to a massive loss in terms of agricultural output.
As the agricultural sector becomes increasingly digitalised, production and related logistics could be vulnerable to a cyber attack, as most of the wheat produced in Ukraine is exported. Still, Kyiv has shown significant cyber resilience since the beginning of the war.
“The Ukrainian internet network is quite robust, so an attack has to be very well prepared to be successful – something that could take months to a year to develop. Unless an attack was in the making for a while, we might not see a major disruption soon,” said Iva Tasheva, the co-founder of CyEn.
However, while the country has significantly improved its cybersecurity posture in recent years, Marshall notes that its agriculture is already under extreme duress. Therefore even minor actions might have important consequences. For Marshall, the first step is acknowledging the risk, which must then be evaluated.
“The war in Ukraine has been a wonderful job from an international community perspective of cyber threat information intelligence sharing. From an agricultural perspective, I think that there are opportunities for further collaboration,” Mashall added.
A representative of the Ukrainian government was not immediately available for comment.
[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]
