Another IoT cyberattack, this one in France: > Hackers gained control of the software that regulates the temperatures of the > refrigeration units, forcing some to warm to 50C (120F) overnight, according > to one supermarket chain affected. > > […] > > Normally, supermarket freezers go through a short period of defrosting > overnight, in which temperatures rise slightly. But the hackers ordered the > units to heat up and stay hot, although Danfoss did not confirm any reports > about just how warm the fridges and freezers could become in that process. > > Danfoss said the affected cold units were older models whose security software > could not be updated to ward off a risk they had identified...

China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday said a new European Commission proposal to restrict high-risk tech vendors from critical supply chains amounted to “blatant protectionism,” warning European officials that Beijing will take “necessary measures” to protect Chinese firms. Beijing has “serious concerns” over the bill, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters, according to state news agencies’ reports. “Using non-technical standards to forcibly restrict or even prohibit companies from participating in the market, without any factual evidence, seriously violates market principles and fair competition rules,” Guo said. The European Commission on Tuesday unveiled its proposal to revamp the bloc’s Cybersecurity Act. The bill seeks to crack down on risky technology vendors in critical supply chains ranging across energy, transport, health care and other sectors. Though the legislation itself does not name any specific countries or companies, it is widely seen as being targeted at China. 5G suppliers Huawei and ZTE are in the EU’s immediate crosshairs, while other Chinese vendors are expected to be hit at a later stage. European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier responded to the Chinese foreign ministry, saying Europe has allowed high-risk vendors from outside the EU in strategic sectors for “far too long.” “We are indeed radically changing this. Because we cannot be naive anymore,” Regnier said in a statement. The exclusion of high-risk suppliers will always be based on “strong risk assessments” and in coordination with EU member countries, he said. China “urges the EU to avoid going further down the wrong path of protectionism,” the Chinese foreign ministry’s Guo told reporters. He added the EU bill would “not only fail to achieve so-called security but will also incur huge costs,” saying some restrictions on using Huawei had already “caused enormous economic losses” in Europe in past years. European telecom operators warned Tuesday that the law would impose multi-billion euro costs on the industry if restrictions on using Huawei and ZTE were to become mandatory across Europe. A Huawei spokesperson said in a statement that laws to block suppliers based on their country of origin violate the EU’s “basic legal principles of fairness, non-discrimination, and proportionality,” as well as its World Trade Organization obligations. The company “reserve[s] all rights to safeguard our legitimate interests,” the spokesperson said. ZTE did not respond to requests for comment on the EU’s plans.

Researchers have demonstrated remotely controlling a wheelchair over Bluetooth. CISA has issued an advisory. > CISA said the WHILL wheelchairs did not enforce authentication for Bluetooth > connections, allowing an attacker who is in Bluetooth range of the targeted > device to pair with it. The attacker could then control the wheelchair’s > movements, override speed restrictions, and manipulate configuration profiles, > all without requiring credentials or user interaction.

Someone hacked an Italian ferry. It looks like the malware was installed by someone on the ferry, and not remotely.

BRUSSELS — First it was telecom snooping. Now Europe is growing worried that Huawei could turn the lights off. The Chinese tech giant is at the heart of a brewing storm over the security of Europe’s energy grids. Lawmakers are writing to the European Commission to urge it to “restrict high-risk vendors” from solar energy systems, in a letter seen by POLITICO. Such restrictions would target Huawei first and foremost, as the dominant Chinese supplier of critical parts of these systems. The fears center around solar panel inverters, a piece of technology that turns solar panels’ electricity into current that flows into the grid. China is a dominant supplier of these inverters, and Huawei is its biggest player. Because the inverters are hooked up to the internet, security experts warn the inverters could be tampered with or shut down through remote access, potentially causing dangerous surges or drops in electricity in Europe’s networks. The warnings come as European governments have woken up to the risks of being reliant on other regions for critical services — from Russian gas to Chinese critical raw materials and American digital services. The bloc is in a stand-off with Beijing over trade in raw materials, and has faced months of pressure from Washington on how Brussels regulates U.S. tech giants. Cybersecurity authorities are close to finalizing work on a new “toolbox” to de-risk tech supply chains, with solar panels among its key target sectors, alongside connected cars and smart cameras. Two members of the European Parliament, Dutch liberal Bart Groothuis and Slovak center-right lawmaker Miriam Lexmann, drafted a letter warning the European Commission of the risks. “We urge you to propose immediate and binding measures to restrict high-risk vendors from our critical infrastructure,” the two wrote. The members had gathered the support of a dozen colleagues by Wednesday and are canvassing for more to join the initiative before sending the letter mid next week.   According to research by trade body SolarPower Europe, Chinese firms control approximately 65 percent of the total installed power in the solar sector. The largest company in the European market is Huawei, a tech giant that is considered a high-risk vendor of telecom equipment. The second-largest firm is Sungrow, which is also Chinese, and controls about half the amount of solar power as Huawei. Huawei’s market power recently allowed it to make its way back into SolarPower Europe, the solar sector’s most prominent lobby association in Brussels, despite an ongoing Belgian bribery investigation focused on the firm’s lobbying activities in Brussels that saw it banned from meeting with European Commission and Parliament officials. Security hawks are now upping the ante. Cybersecurity experts and European manufacturers say the Chinese conglomerate and its peers could hack into Europe’s power grid.  “They can disable safety parameters. They can set it on fire,” Erika Langerová, a cybersecurity researcher at the Czech Technical University in Prague, said in a media briefing hosted by the U.S. Mission to the EU in September.  Even switching solar installation off and on again could disrupt energy supply, Langerová said. “When you do it on one installation, it’s not a problem, but then you do it on thousands of installations it becomes a problem because the … compound effect of these sudden changes in the operation of the device can destabilize the power grid.”  Surges in electricity supply can trigger wider blackouts, as seen in Spain and Portugal in April. | Matias Chiofalo/Europa Press via Getty Images Surges in electricity supply can trigger wider blackouts, as seen in Spain and Portugal in April. Some governments have already taken further measures. Last November, Lithuania imposed a ban on remote access by Chinese firms to renewable energy installations above 100 kilowatts, effectively stopping the use of Chinese inverters. In September, the Czech Republic issued a warning on the threat posed by Chinese remote access via components including solar inverters. And in Germany, security officials already in 2023 told lawmakers that an “energy management component” from Huawei had them on alert, leading to a government probe of the firm’s equipment. CHINESE CONTROL, EU RESPONSE  The arguments leveled against Chinese manufacturers of solar inverters echo those heard from security experts in previous years, in debates on whether or not to block companies like video-sharing app TikTok, airport scanner maker Nuctech and — yes — Huawei’s 5G network equipment. Distrust of Chinese technology has skyrocketed. Under President Xi Jinping, the Beijing government has rolled out regulations forcing Chinese companies to cooperate with security services’ requests to share data and flag vulnerabilities in their software. It has led to Western concerns that it opens the door to surveillance and snooping. One of the most direct threats involves remote management from China of products embedded in European critical infrastructure. Manufacturers have remote access to install updates and maintenance. Europe has also grown heavily reliant on Chinese tech suppliers, particularly when it comes to renewable energy, which is powering an increasing proportion of European energy. Domestic manufacturers of solar panels have enough supply to fill the gap that any EU action to restrict Chinese inverters would create, Langerová said. But Europe does not yet have enough battery or wind manufacturers — two clean energy sector China also dominates. China’s dominance also undercuts Europe’s own tech sector and comes with risks of economic coercion. Until only a few years ago, European firms were competitive, before being undercut by heavily subsidized Chinese products, said Tobias Gehrke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. China on the other hand does not allow foreign firms in its market because of cybersecurity concerns, he said. The European Union previously developed a 5G security toolbox to reduce its dependence on Huawei over these fears. It is also working on a similar initiative, known as the ICT supply chain toolbox, to help national governments scan their wider digital infrastructure for weak points, with a view to blocking or reduce the use of “high-risk suppliers.” According to Groothuis and Lexmann, “binding legislation to restrict risky vendors in our critical infrastructure is urgently required” across the European Union. Until legislation is passed, the EU should put temporary measures in place, they said in their letter.  Huawei did not respond to requests for comment before publication. This article has been updated.

A major outage of Amazon Web Services servers affecting multiple websites Monday morning prompted immediate calls for Europe to boost its tech sovereignty. Slack, Snapchat, Signal and Perplexity were among the affected sites. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers cloud servers that allow these services and millions of other websites and platforms to run. Brussels is in the midst of a debate on how to achieve digital sovereignty, and what that means exactly, with cloud services at the center of the conversation. EU leaders are expected to take a position during a high-level summit meeting later this week. “Today’s outage shows how concentrated power makes the internet fragile and this lack of resilience hits our economies as a result,” technologist Robin Berjon said in an email. Berjon co-founded the Eurostack project — an initiative campaigning to make Europe self-reliant in digital services. “Europe’s dependency on monopoly cloud companies like Amazon is a security vulnerability and an economic threat we can’t ignore,” Cori Crider, executive director of the Future of Technology Institute, said in an email. According to AWS’s health dashboard, which shows a “running log of AWS service interruptions for the past 12 months,” the outage originated with servers in North America and specifically Virginia. That prompted reaction including from Ulrike Franke, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations: “My robot vacuum cleaner no longer works and can someone explain why a robot in Paris is linked to U.S. East? Talk about European digital sovereignty…” she posted on Bluesky. “These disruptions are not just technical issues, they’re democratic failures,” said Corinne Cath-Speth, head of digital at civil society group Article 19. “When a single provider goes dark, critical services go offline with it — media outlets become inaccessible, secure communication apps like Signal stop functioning, and the infrastructure that serves our digital society crumbles.” “We urgently need diversification in cloud computing,” she added. Transcription service Trint said in an email that it had experienced disruption but “customers on our EU servers should be largely unaffected.” In a statement shared with media outlets, Amazon Web Services said: “We continue to observe recovery across most of the affected AWS Services. We can confirm global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also recovered. We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share.” Asked at a briefing of reporters in Brussels on Monday, European Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert said the outage “would be a question for the companies, this is not for us to comment on.” With regard to how it had affected the Commission’s own operations, Paula Pinho, chief spokesperson for the European Commission, said: “We were more using for instance e-mails. We go back to our traditional methods.” Pieter Haeck contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — One of Huawei’s most senior executives in Europe is a suspect in the Belgian investigation into alleged corruption at the European Parliament benefitting the Chinese technology company, POLITICO can reveal.  The senior executive was represented in a Belgian court on Tuesday, documents relating to the hearing showed. He is charged with “active corruption of a person holding a public office, criminal organization and money laundering,” said one of the documents, which were disclosed as part of the preparation of a hearing at Brussels’ Chamber of Accusation.  The senior executive is listed as a vice president for the Europe region at Huawei and previously held a position as chief representative to the European Union leading the firm’s public affairs office in Brussels. He can only be identified as Yong J. Tuesday’s hearing, held behind closed doors, was part of proceedings where defense teams engage with senior judges to discuss procedural matters, including potential custody decisions.  The senior executive could not be reached for comment and his lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Huawei spokesperson also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  The charges followed a series of police raids of premises in Belgium and Portugal, including Huawei’s Brussels lobbying headquarters and several European Parliament offices. | Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images Belgian investigators are probing whether illegal payments were made to secure political backing for an open letter supporting the Chinese company’s interests and signed off by eight members of the European Parliament, according to an arrest warrant seen by POLITICO.  The Belgian prosecutor said Friday it had charged eight people. The charges followed a series of police raids of premises in Belgium and Portugal, including Huawei’s Brussels lobbying headquarters and several European Parliament offices. Aside from Yong J., three other Huawei employees were among the suspects in the corruption probe who first faced Belgian judges last week as part of procedural hearings, including a lobbyist and a senior executive for the firm, who can only be described as Valerio O. and Han W. They are also facing charges related to corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organization.  All suspects are presumed innocent.  Huawei fired two employees and suspended a third for their alleged involvement in the bribery investigation, a spokesperson said Monday. The spokesperson did not disclose the identities or roles of the employees affected. It is unclear whether the employees fired and suspended by Huawei are the same as the Huawei officials who were preliminarily charged. Huawei said in a previous statement: “The company maintains a zero-tolerance stance against corruption. As always, we are fully committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations.”  Mathieu Pollet contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — Huawei has fired two employees and suspended a third for their alleged involvement in a bribery investigation surrounding the Chinese technology giant and the European Parliament, POLITICO has learned. The firm “terminated the employment of two individuals” from April 1 and suspended a third from April 2, a spokesperson for Huawei said in a statement. “We take the ongoing investigation seriously,” the spokesperson added. The spokesperson did not disclose the identities or roles of the employees affected by the measures. A lobbyist, a senior executive and a procurement manager with Huawei were among the suspects in the corruption probe who first faced Belgian judges last week as part of procedural hearings. The officials were preliminary charged with corruption, participation in a criminal organization and money laundering. They are presumed innocent. It is unclear if the three employees fired and suspended by Huawei are the same as the Huawei officials who were preliminary charged. “The company maintains a zero-tolerance stance against corruption. As always, we are fully committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations,” the Huawei spokesperson said. The Belgian prosecutor said Friday it charged eight people in total, three weeks after police raided addresses in Belgium and Portugal, including Huawei’s Brussels lobbying office. Investigators are probing whether illegal payments were made to secure political backing for an open letter supporting the Chinese company’s interest and signed off by eight members of the European Parliament. Out of the eight suspects, three are now under electronic surveillance, two were released “under conditions,” and three remain in prison, according to the statement from the prosecutor.

BRUSSELS — Three Huawei employees and a managing director from Brussels conference organizer Forum Europe appeared in court this week for hearings related to the corruption investigation into the Chinese tech giant’s lobbying in Europe. Police raided more than 20 locations in Belgium and Portugal last month within an investigation into alleged illegal payments made by Huawei to secure an open letter signed by eight European lawmakers in support of the company’s interests, according to the Belgian prosecutor and an arrest warrant seen by POLITICO. Five people were charged as part of the investigation, prosecutors said on March 18. In the first session, the parties met for a 15 minutes behind closed doors at Brussels’ Chamber of Accusation, an appeals court where defense teams discuss ongoing investigations with senior Belgian judges regarding procedural decisions such as whether individuals should be released from custody. A second session, on Wednesday, lasted for more than two hours. According to a court timetable available on site at the Brussels Palace of Justice, the suspects include a lobbyist from Huawei as well as a senior executive and a procurement manager of the Chinese tech firm. The higher profile Huawei employees can be named as Han W. and Valerio O. All are suspected of corruption, participation in a criminal organization and money laundering. They are presumed innocent. Two other defendants are contractors, including one from Forum Europe who is charged with “active corruption of a person holding a public office in an organization governed by public international law,” according to the timetable. Forum Europe said in an email: “We do not have any comment at this time.” The arrest warrant, which POLITICO reported on last week, included details from Belgian prosecutors alleging the key suspects may have facilitated the payments for the pro-Huawei letter. “A sum of €15,000 was offered to the writer of the 5G letter, while each co-signatory was offered €1,500,” read the warrant, signed by the investigative judge. “This transaction or proposed transaction is said to have been endorsed by HUAWEI’s Chinese executives, in particular by …. [the] director of the Brussels office,” it also said. The warrant also described how the former adviser allegedly arranged for the payments via invoices that investigators suspect might be for “alleged consultancy services and campaign expenses, in the amounts of  €18,450 and €27,500.” Huawei said in an earlier statement that it “takes these allegations seriously” and “has a zero tolerance policy towards corruption or other wrongdoing.” The Chinese Embassy in Belgium told POLITICO in a statement that “the Chinese side is in communication with relevant authorities of the Belgian government” and that the “Chinese government always requires Chinese companies [to] strictly observe laws and regulations of the host countries.” Two other people — one former and one current parliamentary assistant to conservative Italian lawmaker Fulvio Martusciello — were arrested in France and Italy as part of the probe, bringing the total number of suspects to at least seven. They both denied any involvement and accepted being extradited.

Police authorities searched two offices belonging to several European Parliament political assistants in Strasbourg, two officials with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO. Police had previously sealed the offices on March 13, the same day that authorities raided more than 20 addresses in Belgium and Portugal as part of an investigation into corruption at the Parliament allegedly benefiting Huawei. Those offices have now been searched, the officials confirmed Thursday. One of the officials confirmed the search in Strasbourg was part of the investigation into Huawei’s lobbying practices. Parliament members and their assistants have offices at the institution’s premises in Brussels, where regular parliamentary activity takes place, as well as at the institution’s official seat in Strasbourg, France, where it holds its plenary sessions. Two offices in Brussels were already sealed and searched earlier this month and were handed back to their tenants. Belgian prosecutors are investigating whether Huawei made illegal payments to get an open letter written, signed by eight European parliamentarians, which defended the Chinese tech giant’s interests, according to judicial documents seen by POLITICO. Four people have been charged with corruption and criminal organization and one with money laundering, the Belgian prosecutor’s office said. One parliamentary assistant to Italian center-right MEP Fulvio Martusciello was arrested in Italy on March 20. The assistant in question has been suspended from employment by the Parliament, according to the institution’s press services. Martusciello’s office in 2021 led the effort to promote the letter that is under investigation. A spokesperson for Huawei said in a previous statement that the company “has a zero tolerance policy towards corruption or other wrongdoing, and we are committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations at all times.”