E-commerce supply chains could be exposed to cyberattacks through a gap in digital defenses in their warehouse barcode scanners, cybersecurity consulting firm Kaspersky Security Services said today.
The company said it had discovered a new cyber-attack vector via “a barcode scanner model from a major manufacturer” as part of a security audit of a warehouse digital ecosystem. The attack pattern was observed across devices from multiple vendors, and could allow hackers to use such scanners as an entry point to gain a foothold on a computer within the greater warehouse network.
Kaspersky explained that a typical setup in warehousing and retail applications has handheld scanners communicating with a base station, which is in turn connected to a workstation or another business system. The main weak point is that there is no authentication between the base station and the scanners. That’s a problem because modern warehouses constitute complex ecosystems built upon multiple technologies and devices. So the scanners in question might serve as an entry point into the entire warehouse OT network.
In a hypothetical attack, a legitimate user may be carrying out their normal daily work using a wireless barcode scanner connected to a base station, while an attacker obtains the Bluetooth address of the base station, for example, through passive eavesdropping on Bluetooth traffic. The attacker then sends a malicious payload to the base station, simulating keyboard keystrokes. And the base station forwards these keystrokes to the connected PC, where they are interpreted as legitimate user input and may be used to execute unauthorized commands.
Kaspersky researchers believe that the same attack scenarios might be used for other warehouse devices like Portable Data Terminals (PDR) or thermal printers to gain access to infrastructure such as warehouse management systems (WMS).
“Modern retail and logistics are profoundly digital, from enterprise-wide management platforms down to every device in a worker’s hands. This pervasive connectivity means that any technology at any tier can become an entry point for a cyberattack capable of destabilising the entire ecosystem – as our research shows, even a single barcode scanner. The warehouse sector, and the broader retail industry, should treat cybersecurity as a top priority across every layer of their operations,” said Sergey Sidorov, Head of Industrial Security Services at Kaspersky.
To protect against such a scheme, Kaspersky experts recommend verifying every new device in warehouse environments before it connects to the network, disabling any unused Bluetooth interfaces, enforcing strong authentication mechanisms, segmenting warehouse networks so that only essential connections are permitted, promptly applying security updates to both devices and the WMS, restricting account permissions to the minimum required, and conducting regular full‑scale attack‑path exercises that include scenarios involving insiders with legitimate credentials.
