Tag Archive for: Farm…

Cybersecurity on the farm conference to address internet security

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The farming sector is sometimes targeted by cybercriminals because of farming’s critical function — supplying the food and fiber that humans and animals depend upon.

The first of its kind Cybersecurity on the Farm Conference, offered by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, will be held at the Iowa State University Alumni Center in Ames on Jan. 11, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

In an era where technology is reshaping every industry, farming stands at the crossroads of innovation and tradition. This one-day conference is designed to address the unique intersection of today’s agriculture and cybersecurity.

For farmers, this workshop offers insights into the ever-evolving world of digital lending in farming and the shift toward online agricultural marketplaces. There will be critical discussions on the potential cyber threats that emerge when working in the agricultural sector. By the end of the day, farmers will be better equipped to navigate farming on the internet while keeping a keen eye on safety and security.

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Russia’s Notorious Troll Farm Disbands

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When Yevgeny Prighozin, the head of the notorious mercenary army known as the Wagner Group, staged an aborted coup against the Russian government, his brief revolt led to the deaths of 13 Russian fighter pilots and a serious blow to Vladimir Putin’s sense of invulnerability. Now the fallout of that strange story has also apparently taken another casualty: the most notorious troll farm in the world, known as the Internet Research Agency.

But we’ll get to that. First, Elon Musk is having a tough week. After Twitter’s baffling decision to temporarily limit the number of tweets users can read each day, Mark Zuckerberg sucker-punched the self-sabotaged platform with the launch of Threads. The Instagram-linked microblogging app surged to the top of the app store charts, gaining a staggering 30 million users in 24 hours—a clear sign that many people are willing to ignore Meta’s privacy-invading ways.

If you want to get in on the Threads action but don’t want to share all your data with Meta, there’s a better way: Don’t join. Instead, wait until Threads connects to the broader decentralized social media ecosystem enabled by the ActivityPub protocol, which is also used by Mastodon. It should enable you to interact with Threads without signing up for an account or downloading the app. And if you’re still trying to pick which Twitter alternative to jump on—or just want to see what data each platform collects—we’ve broken down the privacy policies of Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and more.

Even if you don’t share your data with Meta, the information about you that’s already out there is likely up for sale. But it’s not just companies buying up your personal details—cops and spies are purchasing that data too. That is, unless the US Congress puts a stop to it. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has submitted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress must pass each year, that would forbid intelligence agencies from buying sensitive data about Americans. The amendment has to survive a long debate before it can become law, but if Congress keeps it intact, US spies will no longer be able to buy your location data and search histories on the open market.

Finally,…

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Farm security advances with technology

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It struck me recently during my routine of locking the house for the night that I can’t remember us ever locking up on the farm.

Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. I might have been lying on the living-room floor, reading and listening to “The Shadow’’ on the radio. My mom worried a lot. She would have wanted to lock up. I just don’t remember that we did.

We did not lock the place when we went away. We returned from a holiday trip once to find my mom’s favorite parakeet on the floor and one of the cats prowling the house. The cat was supposed to be outside. The bird was supposed to be in its cage. A neighbor popped by with some gifts, letting the cat slip in, too. The neighbor apparently opened the cage and didn’t get it latched. My mom missed that bird’s happy chirping.

As someone who has lived in town most of his adult life, I would no more go to bed without checking the locks than I would leave my cash and credit cards on the front step with a “Free, Take Some’’ sign. I don’t expect to be robbed in the night, but I want to make it as difficult as possible, just in case.

From the time Nancy and I got married, and that’s almost 55 years now, I have made sure the house was locked. It was kind of a Ronald Reagan “Trust but verify’’ policy many years before Reagan left the movies for the White House. My dad might have described the approach as “don’t expect trouble, but don’t be a fool, either.’’

I have no recollection of us locking doors on the farm, ever. I don’t know that our neighbors did, either. Now that the topic is in my mind, I will try to track down some old people from my generation and see what they remember. I should talk to a few of them, anyway.

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Maybe farm folks in the 1950s had a higher level of trust. Maybe their judgment of the honesty and integrity of their fellow humans was higher than mine sometimes is today.

As I look…

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Tractors vs. threat actors: How to hack a farm

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Forget pests for a minute. Modern farms also face another – and more insidious – breed of threat.

While I was in the UK police force and part of the National Cyber Crime Unit in 2018, I was asked to give a talk on cybersecurity at a National Farmers’ Union (NFU) meeting in southern England. Right after I started my talk, one farmer immediately raised his hand and told me that his cows had recently “been hacked”. Baffled and amused, I was instantly hooked and wanted to know more about his story.

He went on to tell me that his farm was relatively high tech and that his cows were hooked up to an online milking machine. Once, when he had clicked on a malicious email attachment, his computer network went down and he realized that without the network he had no way of knowing which cow had been milked or which cow needed milking next, causing major panic and stress – and quite possibly not just for him.

Making things worse, it wasn’t just his cows that had been attacked, according to the farmer. All the farm’s online accounts had also been compromised and, therefore, his tractors had been taken offline, leaving him with no information on which of his fields had been cropped or still needed cropping, as the tractor usually plans out the routes via his online accounts.

Tractor being used in a Dorset field

Caught in the crosshairs

Indeed, farming is nowhere near like it used to be. The increased use of email, online monitoring tools, remote controls, and payment systems – as well as automated smart farming equipment such as internet-connected tractors – means that the digital threat level is rapidly increasing for farmers and rural communities.

Few of us give this much thought, but some farms are very high tech and I personally am immensely impressed by the technology used in agriculture. However, this equally attracts threats far worse than slugs and crows. Put simply, farmers all over world are now experiencing the same cyberthreat level as other industries.

A University of Cambridge report recently said that smart farming technology such as…

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