[HN Gopher] Chickens, cows, threatened in Ransomware on Canadian...
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Chickens, cows, threatened in Ransomware on Canadian farms
Author : cameron_b
Score : 85 points
Date : 2023-03-14 12:47 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (financialpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (financialpost.com)
| uhtred wrote:
| Sad for the animals. But what do people reading the article think
| is going to happen to the animals anyway? They are going to get
| killed so you can eat them. Have you seen how they kill chickens?
| Hang them by their feet and slit their throats. Nice. All because
| YOU demand it every time you buy that pack of chicken breasts for
| your unimaginative "lean protein hurr durr" meal of chicken and
| broccoli. Maybe stop eating meat and the poor things wouldn't be
| in this situation in the first place.
| kulahan wrote:
| Because there's a difference between millions of animals being
| murdered for no reason and then wasted vs millions of animals
| being slaughtered for food. For one, nobody is going to eat
| those animals because many of them were not ready or there is
| simply too much supply for the demand at that time.
| ccooffee wrote:
| Agreed. This isn't really a threat from the perspective of the
| animals. (Or, well, it is, but the magnitude of the loss isn't
| very high. Maybe it's like a death row inmate dying of covid
| instead of lethal injection scheduled for a month in the
| future?) The animals are going to die regardless. This is a
| ransomware threat to the profit-making which requires the
| animals to die in the "right" manner.
|
| Granted, the article DOES NOT discuss this issue as the title
| (and your comment) suggests. The article talks about how
| ransomware is a sneaky threat to Canadian national food
| security. I'd not considered ransomware and food security too
| closely intertwined, so that's nice I guess. If all of the
| livestock in the country dies, there's probably not enough
| rice, beans, and potatoes for everyone .
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >Twice, Dehghantanha has seen hackers break into a farm system
| and threaten to kill livestock -- chickens in one case, cattle in
| another. And in about a third of the investigations his team as
| conducted over the past year, he has found evidence that state-
| sponsored hackers from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran have
| figured out how to quietly gain access to a control system inside
| a farm.
|
| ...
|
| >For example, a hacker _could_ gain control of a thermostat and
| threaten to turn up the heat and kill an entire flock of
| chickens.
|
| More info needed. Are they actually hacking into the HVAC and
| bricking it, or is a website getting popped and then a _scary
| message_ is displayed? Or both? These are always separate systems
| with separate creds. Maybe this is the way farmers realize you
| don 't use the same password for your s3 bucket and "prod"
| chicken barn thermostat.
| cameron_b wrote:
| Speculation warning, since no devices were directly
| referenced...
|
| These setups use PLCs to control water circulation, ventilation
| actuators, augers, and the like. I've even seen Honey Bee
| feeding set up with PLC interfaces just because they're common
| and easy.
|
| But if they're on the internet with a dashboard, they are
| likely the "soft belly" as we've seen in lots of industrial
| ransomware incidents.
|
| I've worked in similar ( not the same sector ) automation
| control environments where the programmers involved live in
| time-crunch "copy-pasta, change the labels" environments and
| security is relegated to network models.
|
| How many control systems have been impacted by scope creep and
| are now on the network when they weren't initially? How many of
| those are on the internet because someone wanted access from
| their iPad?
|
| I'm fairly bothered that the only hope I have in some of the
| equipment I've worked on is that if it is accessible from the
| internet one day, it has far too many indistinguishable peers
| to be a "particular" target and it would take a lot of research
| to determine any value.
| modzu wrote:
| that photo of the chicken barn is terrifying
| ffhhj wrote:
| Lots of beings trapped in four walls with artificial light all
| day, just like the office... oh.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| People are being murdered in offices by the billion?
| thebetatester wrote:
| No, in many cases it's a much slower agonizing death. But
| you might get a gold watch at the end!
| ackbar03 wrote:
| That's what they told those chicken too
| dathos wrote:
| You'll have to look up agonizing, I bet going through a
| machine with the sounds of your companions dying all
| around you is a lot more agonizing than choosing an
| unhappy life and living with those consequences
| bbarnett wrote:
| I would agree, but I've seen cattle being offloaded into
| an abattoir. A few trucks in a parking lot, one unloading
| into a corral, with a bridge/ramp headed into the
| building.
|
| I've seen startled cattle, and I've seen frightened
| cattle. None of these were. Yet inside, the sound of
| dying cattle could be heard, with a "Bam!" from the gun
| used to euthanize by nail-to-the-brain, and a "thud' of
| the cattle falling afterwards.
|
| I presumed, at the time, that the lack of concern was due
| to a lack of panicked sounds. The cattle simply died
| instantly, without exhibiting any pain response, or
| noise, first.
|
| So no.. at least for cattle, it seems to be without the
| experience you describe.
| dathos wrote:
| I bet if we had cow psychologists they might diagnose
| them with shock, living near pig farms my experience is a
| lot different. The stress of transportation, the smell of
| dead animals, these are so unnatural and without any
| possible escape what would you do?
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| lockhouse wrote:
| Murder is a bit hyperbolic isn't it?
|
| These animals have been raised solely with the purpose of
| being eaten. They would have never come in to existence
| otherwise, and their death is happening to feed people.
| merry_flame wrote:
| Your reasoning here is wrong I don't even know where to
| start... The fact that Agent A brings into existence
| Agent B gives them the right to dispose of Agent B in any
| way they want? When does that ever make sense?
| lockhouse wrote:
| Would you prefer these domestic animals just get set free
| in the wild to be eaten by predators, starve to death, or
| die of preventable diseases? They have already been born,
| they can feed people, and they will most likely live a
| much less humane life in the wild.
|
| Sure, hypothetically some of them could become pets, but
| that would be a tiny minority of them.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| That's nothing.
|
| Here's the latest, world's most advanced disease incubator.
| Courtesy of China of course. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/25/chinas-2...
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| >Workers will be required to go through multiple rounds of
| disinfection and testing before being given clearance to
| enter, and won't be able to leave the site until their next
| break - reportedly once a week.
|
| I can't imagine living and working for weeks at a time in an
| environment like that,it sounds awfully dystopian. Imagine a
| cyberpunk future where the lower casts are permanent
| sequestered from society because they've been quarantined.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| They can leave at any time. It's just that their social
| credit score will go to 0.
| piyh wrote:
| Those pig barns look about the same as the ones in Iowa. Only
| difference is one is in a high rise.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Doesn't seem any worse than "battery cages" for chickens. Not
| that either setup is good for the animals.
|
| What's the solution though? Either people need to eat less
| meat (and pay more for it) or the global human population
| needs to stabilize or even decrease a little. Neither option
| seems popular, so technology fills the need.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| The developed world is really doing its bit here. We have
| stopped breeding humans at a sustainable rate and are
| looking at falling populations in the near future as the
| boomers age-out
| GordonS wrote:
| This is just one of the reasons why people here in the UK are
| so opposed to allowing imports of cheap US meat - US and
| Canadian animal welfare standards are absolutely disgusting.
|
| EDIT: missed out the word "Canadian" by mistake.
| voisin wrote:
| Singer's Animal Liberation in the 70s had an impact on most
| of the world whereas in the US animal welfare got worse as
| farm sizes continued to increase and farms industrialized.
| euroderf wrote:
| I'm glad to see this book mentioned. It's a good read. Not
| dogmatic. It explores several angles from which to think
| about the welfare of animals in the custody of humans.
| linuxguy2 wrote:
| It was a picture of a Canadian farm.
| cmccart wrote:
| Not that you're wrong about US factory farming, but this
| article (and the photos) are only concerned with Canada.
| It's, unfortunately, not just a US problem.
| [deleted]
| systems wrote:
| why, its canada, outside could be cold and snowy and while it
| seem crowded, we cannot tell for sure
|
| yes i read the articles that said, when chicken are put in very
| tight place or in areas where they are too crowded, i that they
| can start to behave aggressive towards each other
|
| that being said, how can we tell if this is too crowded for
| chickens?
| datkam wrote:
| I don't think that they even go outside...
| lm28469 wrote:
| > that being said, how can we tell if this is too crowded for
| chickens?
|
| lmao this is on the same level as when we used to do surgery
| on newborn/babies without anaesthetics because "they can't
| feel pain"
|
| We grow them so fast their organs can't even follow, we let
| them live for 4 weeks before slaughter when healthy ones
| could live 5-10 years, we cut their beak so they can't hurt
| eachother in stress induced fights
|
| How can you look at a picture of a dark barn, with something
| like 10+ chicken per sq meter, bathing in their own shit and
| piss for the bulk of their miserable existence, and ask "how
| can we tell if this is too crowded for chickens"
|
| > outside could be cold and snowy
|
| They most likely will never see outside, the extreme vast
| majority don't
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx4rDvYHrZM
|
| https://www.humanesociety.org/news/super-size-problem-
| broile...
| parton wrote:
| I can tell you from personal experience working in these
| barns that it really is that crowded, and it isn't pleasant
| in there for either chickens or humans.
| maartn wrote:
| Looking at the photo I wonder if those animals will be worse off
| if these "farmers" aren't willing to pay...
| mberlove wrote:
| _" Farms are now complex technical operations that use networks
| of remote monitors that measure soil moisture, or robotic milkers
| that can detect an infection in a single teat, or environmental
| control systems that maintain the precise indoor temperature and
| air filtration needs of a poultry barn."_
|
| Both a completely understandable and even desirable outcome of
| advancements in animal husbandry, and an unacceptably vulnerable
| solution to a massively important system where low-tech solutions
| are well available.
|
| Modern massive farming requires tech to be efficient? That feels
| like a reasonable statement though I have no proof of it.
| Maintaining or improving farm output at scale requires massive
| centralized farming? That feels like less of a reasonable
| statement, and again, I have no proof one way or another.
|
| Are there studies on this? Can we decentralize, downscale,
| without compromising outputs?
|
| Just ruminating here (pun definitely intended).
| pjc50 wrote:
| Pretty much every production improvement in either farming or
| manufacture since the 19th century has been:
|
| - scaling up is more efficient, because the production increase
| has a better "slope" than the increased capital investment
|
| - increasing uniformity is more efficient, through the means of
| statistical process control, which requires more information
| and information processing
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Is there any goods-producing industry that is more efficient by
| being decentralized? This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm
| really not sure.
|
| And I don't mean software, media, IP, etc. but stuff like milk
| or meat or lumber or micro chips.
| ddulaney wrote:
| Ginseng is an interesting one [0]. It can be farmed without
| too much trouble, but farmed ginseng has a more uniform,
| smoother appearance than wild ginseng. One of the major uses
| is in Chinese traditional medicine, where it's believed that
| wild ginseng has better properties (exactly what properties
| and how you measure them is hard to pin down).
|
| This leads to a tension: You can set up an efficient, high
| yield, centralized farm, but your main buyers will value your
| crop less. Or you can use "simulated wild" conditions that
| create a wild-like appearance and charge more, but now you
| need a very different operation that looks more like forestry
| than farming and is much more likely to be decentralized. And
| of course you can still forage, but that has its own
| limitations (lots of details in [0]).
|
| [0]: https://www.uky.edu/ccd/sites/www.uky.edu.ccd/files/gins
| eng....
| pjc50 wrote:
| Certain rapid prototyping can be _faster_ by being
| decentralised, but this results in higher per-unit costs. It
| 's cheaper to 3D print than do injection moulding if you just
| want one item, but not if you want 10,000.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| You know the old saying in computing, "Fast, Cheap, Good - pick
| two"?
|
| That applies to farming too.
|
| If you're okay with paying roughly 50% more across the board in
| the supermarket, then farming can be rather less dependent on
| technology.
| bluGill wrote:
| Also if you are okay with many starving to death. There are
| more then 8 billion people on earth who need to eat
| Vrondi wrote:
| If you're going to do the high tech intensive route, though,
| then you must needs also have a security expert on staff, and I
| bet you that's a rare thing.
| isk517 wrote:
| Forget a security expert, from what I've witnessed in a lot
| of industries security can be improved 100 fold by simply
| listing to what any half decent IT staff would recommend. So
| many business still think its ok to have a single login off a
| vital system with a 4 character password shared amongst 30
| employees.
| chamanbuga wrote:
| Spoke to a few farmer friends. They tell me that large scale
| operations are very technically complex and have many digital
| systems deployed for remote management. That being said, a lot
| of the numbers here seemed to be miss reported. This seems like
| a combination of genuine issue and fear pandering.
| [deleted]
| lockhouse wrote:
| Can cryptocurrency just hurry up and die off already?
|
| I can't think of any technological development that has been more
| of a net negative for society than cryptocurrency.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Nuclear weapons? Leaded petrol?
| lockhouse wrote:
| We haven't had World War III since nuclear weapons were
| invented. I'd consider that a net positive.
|
| Leaded petrol enabled transportation on a grand scale until
| it was discovered to be harmful and replaced with unleaded.
| Again, cryptocurrencies are so much worse.
| flangola7 wrote:
| > We haven't had World War III since nuclear weapons were
| invented. I'd consider that a net positive.
|
| Not to take away from your point about crypto (which I
| agree with) but I wouldn't call that a positive. WW3 is
| near certain to happen some day. It's only been 80 years
| and we've already had multiple extremely close calls that
| we escaped by pure luck. 80 years is not a very long time
| when it comes to weapon history. How long was the sword and
| spear in use?
|
| We've avoided an atomic holocaust in spite of nuclear
| stockpiles, not because of them.
| stametseater wrote:
| If not for nuclear weapons, WW3 almost certainly would
| have already occurred during the 20th century, plausibly
| starting during the Berlin Blockade in the immediate
| aftermath of WW2. And if not then when wounds were still
| healing, then a few years later.
|
| Advances in weapon delivery have made WW3 less likely to
| start now than ever before. With very precise guidance,
| the feasibility of ensuring the utter destruction of
| leadership has improved dramatically. The idea is to make
| WW3 the least rational option for anybody who might start
| it. Even if somebody goes insane and wants to die in a
| fireball, it is unlikely that they would be able to
| convince everybody else in the kill-chain to go along
| with that decision. A "General Ripper" scenario in which
| only a few nukes fly at first is unlikely to escalate
| into a full blown war, because even in that scenario a
| full committed nuclear exchange would still be irrational
| for both sides. Furthermore, ballistic missile submarines
| make it infeasible to "win" a short nuclear war with a
| decapitating strike. The effect of all of these systems
| taken together is a strong incentive to deescalate even
| if a limited nuclear exchange were to occur.
|
| > We've avoided an atomic holocaust in spite of nuclear
| stockpiles, not because of them.
|
| If not for nuclear weapons, an "atomic holocaust" would
| never have been on the table, so that's basically a
| tautological statement. What we actually avoided with
| nuclear weapons was a WW3 fought with chemical and
| biological weapons of mass destruction. The supposed
| ineffectiveness of chemical weapons is a modern myth;
| during the cold war both sides fully expected and
| prepared for the extensive use of chemical weapons. Such
| disasters were only narrowly averted during WW2; Hitler
| refused to use nerve gasses perhaps for personal reasons,
| and because he feared the allied bombers operating with
| near impunity over Germany would be able to respond in
| kind (the allies did not then have nerve gas, but Hitler
| didn't know that.) And if Churchill had his way, Germany
| would have been rendered uninhabitable for generations
| using anthrax bombs; thankfully his staff managed to talk
| him out of it. You might think that these are examples of
| chemical and biological weapons providing sufficient
| deterrence on their own, but they weren't sufficient
| deterrence to stop the war generally, and neither
| chemical nor biological weapons could be as effective at
| killing leadership in bunkers as nuclear weapons. Nuclear
| weapons have proven to be much more effective at
| deterrence.
| lockhouse wrote:
| I disagree, mutually assured destruction kept the Cold
| War relatively cold for decades of hostilities between
| two superpowers.
|
| EDIT:
|
| Also, don't underestimate how many people (Soldiers and
| civilians alike) would have been killed in an amphibious
| assault on Japan itself by the allied forces. This was
| the reasoning behind using atomic weapons at the end of
| World War II in the first place.
|
| I am quite certain that nuclear weapons have saved lives
| overall.
| to11mtm wrote:
| 1. Leaded Petrol was known to be harmful for a long time.
| In fact, some TEL Additives were very pointedly marketed as
| 'Ethyl' and did their best to leave the 'Lead' part out.
|
| 2. Ethanol was known to have Anti-knock properties at the
| time. The only advantage of TEL was that it helped the life
| of the valvetrain... oh and it was patentable.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Leaded petrol was known to be harmful by the very person
| who drove the manufacturing process. People working with
| the stuff were known to not last.
| stametseater wrote:
| The valve thing is urban legend, insofar as there's no
| evidence that TEL mitigating valve seat damage was a
| known phenomena before the 1960s. So mitigating valve
| seat recession was not the motivation of TEL when TEL was
| adopted and only became a motivation for keeping TEL
| decades later when the effect was discovered.
| Run_DOS_Run wrote:
| Democracy-destroying social media networks and weapons of mass
| dumbing down like TikTok are much more harmful to the world
| than cryptocurrencies.
| labster wrote:
| As much as I agree with the first half of your statement, the
| climate impacts of crypto far outstrip the genocide-inducing
| effects of social media.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| The smartphone
| cwkoss wrote:
| How many deaths would you attribute to cryptocurrency?
|
| Dollar hegemony's death toll is in the millions.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Let's turn it around this way...what good has cryptocurrency
| done?
| cwkoss wrote:
| Enables storage and transaction of value without indirectly
| funding the war machine
| lockhouse wrote:
| Cryptocurrency directly funds criminal organizations and
| rogue nations like North Korea.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Dollars do that to a much larger extent
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