Following recent cyberattacks targeting supermarket refrigeration systems, household appliances could be next, the head of the EU’s cybersecurity agency warned on Tuesday, urging Europe to invest more in tackling growing cyber threats.
The warning comes amid a series of cyber incidents across Europe in recent months, raising widespread concerns among governments and the public about society’s vulnerability to cyberattacks and the continent’s preparedness for future threats.
“Security must not and cannot be an afterthought,” Juhan Lepassaar, Executive Director of the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), told AFP.
“Today it was refrigerators, tomorrow it could be internet-connected devices, the day after tomorrow it could be household appliances, and so on,” he said.
Lepassaar stressed that these incidents can be prevented and that cybersecurity does not come cheap. However, he questioned whether governments and organisations are prepared to make the necessary investments.
“When we look at the threat landscape, the picture is not particularly rosy,” he warned.
Recent incidents range from vulnerabilities in PHP software, which prompted several EU governments to shut down their websites to prevent exploitation by hackers, to a wave of cyberattacks targeting supermarket refrigerators and blood banks in France and eight other countries. The latter incidents were linked to vulnerabilities in outdated software.
Cyber threats are evolving and becoming increasingly visible, partly due to artificial intelligence. Organisations are now being forced to keep pace with the latest advances in AI models in what is increasingly becoming an arms race in cyberspace.
“Recent developments, not only in frontier AI models but also cyber incidents involving cooling systems across the EU, highlight operational gaps and the need for timely information-sharing and coordination,” Lepassaar said.
ENISA also describes AI as a “force multiplier”, accelerating and expanding the ability of both hackers and cybersecurity defenders to identify vulnerabilities.
“Research-synthesised data shows that the time between discovery and weaponisation is approaching zero,” the agency’s report states, suggesting that companies may soon have virtually no time to protect themselves against vulnerabilities once systems are launched.
At the same time, the report notes that advanced AI is having a significant impact on vulnerability management by shortening response and patching times. This means companies can also use AI proactively to identify and address security weaknesses before hackers exploit them.
Beyond using AI to discover vulnerabilities on a large scale, hackers can also use the technology to strengthen existing attack methods.
For example, AI tools allow attackers to carry out increasingly convincing operations using fabricated videos, audio recordings and messages to deceive individuals and feed false information into systems, potentially disrupting corporate operations.
