COLD WAR

Pentagon Pete Suffers Military Food Disaster

Hackers are believed to have tampered with fridge temperatures, spoiling food in military bases.

Hackers are believed to be behind a series of strange freezer breakdowns at military bases across the U.S.

Freezers at at least six commissaries—stores where troops and military staff buy their food—had their temperatures meddled with in August, Reuters reported.

In one instance, the temperature was cranked up, melting and spoiling food.

The Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Facebook page in August said its freezer “went into defrost mode where it heated ​up all the food. Trust us when we say it was ‘spoiled.’”

The incidents resemble hacker attacks on computer systems at commercial supermarkets in France in October, which left tons of food ruined in up to 700 stores. Refrigeration unit temperatures were raised in France too, in some cases sparking fires and triggering sprinkler systems.

Reuters said it was unclear whether investigators had identified the hackers behind the incidents in the U.S. French authorities have also not publicly identified any suspects.

A Department of Defense official told the Daily Beast that a unit of Cyber Command, or the military’s cyber operations unit, was “working in close coordination with interagency and law ​enforcement partners” in response to the incidents.

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Experts believe that the hackers exposed weaknesses in the controls used to regulate food storage unit temperatures that are connected to the internet.

A spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division told the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph that U.S. military investigators were working with French authorities to understand the cause of the outages.

HACK ATTACK

Keystone Kash and Pentagon Pete Hit by Twin Humiliations

William Vaillancourt

Hackers are increasingly targeting critical infrastructure, including water, telecommunications, food and energy systems. In July, the FBI said hackers attacked water operators in at least seven states, adding that “some of that activity degraded water operations.”

It’s the latest in a series of breaches of U.S. military digital systems, adding to the mounting challenges faced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon. In September, hackers accessed the data of 3 million U.S. military members, including Social Security details.

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