Page 11 - National Poultry Newspaper

Food cyber attacks forecast
to cyber-attack, with an eye on the potential seri- ous effects on the general population in terms of food supply, labour and flow-on costs.
Join the NPN email list to receive your FREE monthly digital paper!
Sign up at www.poultrynews.com.au
SMART technologies are raising global agri- cultural production, but international research- ers warn this digital phenomenon could reap a crop of another kind – cybersecurity attacks.
population, which is fore- cast to reach 10.9 billion by 2100.”
ties to digital agriculture, in particular possible side-channel attacks spe- cific to ag-tech applica- tions,” Dr Rehman said.
Complex IT and math modelling at King Ab- dulaziz University in Saudi Arabia, Aix- Marseille University in France and Flinders Uni- versity in South Australia has highlighted the risks in a new article in the open access journal Sen- sors.
Researchers warn this progress in production, genetic modification for drought-resistant crops and other technologies is prone to cyber-attack – particularly if the ag- tech sector doesn’t take adequate precautions as per other corporate or de- fence sectors.
“Digital agriculture is not immune to cyber-at- tack – as seen by inter- ference to a US watering system, a meatpacking firm, wool broker soft- ware and an Australian beverage company.
Lead author Profes- sor Abel Alahmadi from King Abdulaziz Univer- sity said, “Smart sensors and systems are used to monitor crops, plants, the environment, water, soil moisture, and diseases.”
Flinders University re- searcher and expert in cy- bersecurity and network- ing Dr Saeed Rehman said the rise of internet connectivity and smart low-power devices has fa- cilitated the shift of many labour-intensive food production jobs into the digital domain – includ- ing modern techniques for accurate irrigation, soil and crop monitoring using drone surveillance.
Flinders University co- author Professor David Glynn said, “Extraction of cryptographic or sen- sitive information from the operation of physical hardware is termed side- channel attack.”
“The transformation to digital agriculture would improve the quality and quantity of food for the ever-increasing human
“These attacks could be easily carried out with physical access to devic- es, which the cybersecu- rity community has not explicitly investigated.”
“However, we should not overlook security threats and vulnerabili-
The researchers rec- ommend investment into precautions and aware- ness about the vulnerabil- ities of digital agriculture
An overview of digital agriculture and its various applications.
www.poultrynews.com.au
National Poultry Newspaper, June 2022 – Page 11