# Survey on Security Threats in Agricultural IoT and Smart Farming
## 3 Security Threats in Modern Agriculture
### Cybercrime and Cybersecurity in Agriculture  
Cybercrime is defined as a crime where a computer or a smart device is the object of the crime and/or is used as a tool to commit an offense. A cybercriminal may use a device to access a user's personal information, confidential business information, government information, or disable a device [78]. Selling or eliciting the abovementioned information online is also considered as a cybercrime. Currently,cybercrime is a worldwide criminal activity and the persons (attackers) that get involved are highly motivated to acquire new technologies, discover and identify new or already existing vulnerabilities and breaches, in order to reach their target and perform an unethical action [60; 79; 80]. An enormous amount of heterogeneous types of data is transferred through the networks using connected smart devices. The increasing accessibility to smart technology also means that there are multiple access points within users' homes, offices and any other kind of application or space for hackers to exploit. While law enforcement attempts to tackle this growing issue, crime numbers continue to grow, taking advantage of the anonymity of the internet [78]. Hackers can gain unauthorized access to these types of devices by discovering vulnerabilities at many different layers of ICT systems, such as middleware, network or application layer. It is important for agricultural stakeholders to recognize and protect the ICT environment, as well as to ensure adherence to the current privacy regulations, taking into account the inherent risks of ICT and IoT systems [80]. As an answer to cybercrime, cybersecurity has been an ever-evolving area in recent decades and it will continue to be such, as our world shifts to become more and more online. Individual organizations are highly dependent on supply chains and networks [81], which makes it extremely difficult to manage risks due to the fact that every type of defense is only as strong as its weakest link. Additionally, the existence of one or more possible weaknesses in a third-party application could also put the entire adopted system at risk [82]. Furthermore, even larger firms or companies may have difficulty to recruit the necessary experts, in order to design and develop an adequate defense system against cyber threats and attacks. The larger an organization is, the greater the possibilities are to find weaknesses somewhere in the supply chain [81]. Such weaknesses can provide an access point for cyber criminals, enabling them to launch illegal, devastating attacks on critical infrastructures, such as water or power systems [82; 83; 84; 85]. Nowadays, a cyber-attack to an agricultural or food company is more feasible as the digitization and the use of many devices that are connected to the internet, offer more opportunities to the potential (cyber)criminal in a domain that previously was too difficult to strike or too distant to physically approach [61]. Hence, a possible cyber-attack or security issue in an agricultural company could result in significant human or financial consequences. This suggests that relevant security challenges, arising from the massive and daily use of IoT technology as well as the rise of agroterrorism, demand sufficient attention, security planning and counter measures [61]. Many types of cyber-attacks can cause significant financial and security implications in the agricultural sector, as the majority of system operations are network-based, and on many occasions may not be secured from cyber-threats [86]. Complex combinations of network systems, and especially the dependencies of such systems, amplify vulnerabilities to possible threats by creating possibilities for various cyber threats and causing a cascading effect to materialize. According to [PERSON] et al.