# Cyber-Security Threats and Side-Channel Attacks for Digital Agriculture
## 1 Introduction  
The human population has increased exponentially in the last century. It is estimated that it will peak at 10.9 billion by 2100 [1]. The quality and quantity of global food resources have improved mainly due to technological innovations in genetic engineering in the last fifty years. Genetic engineering helps develop seeds and plants that can grow with less water and produce more nutrients to meet the demands of a growing population. Digital agriculture is the next technological innovation for the sustainable production of food in the agriculture sector [2]. Countries are combating desertification, for example the Saudi Green Initiative (an extension of Saudi Vision 2030), where four million lemon trees that rely on recycled water for irrigation are being planted, as well as hundreds of millions of other trees that should modify the climate and aid farming. Digital agriculture is not immune to cyber-attacks, which can range from controlling a heating and ventilation system of a vertical farm to controlling a drone used for spraying crops. In recent times, cyber-attacks on the Florida water system [3], Lion (an Australian beverage company with business in diary and drinks), wool broker software [4], and JBS [5] (the world's largest meatpacker) have made headlines around the world. This has highlighted the vulnerabilities in digital agriculture and potential disastrous effects on the general population in terms of supply, labour, and cost. Typically, malicious actors target cheaper and more accessible pathways that could be vulnerable, involving humans, devices, software, processes, or technologies, under-protected by the user, but having very serious implications. The authors in [6] audited six dairy farms in Finland, and it was found that most of the networking equipmentwas physically not secured and default credentials were used, which could be easily compromised. The threat actors have also evolved from amateurs to sovereign states with virtually unlimited resources. The 2022 World Economic Forum survey put cyber-security failure in the top 10 risks, worsening in the COVID-19 crisis, while at the regional level, it is in the top 5 risks [7]. Cyber-security is becoming common vernacular due to the plethora of attacks on digital infrastructure. [PERSON] et al. [8] performed a bibliometric analysis of publications in the security and privacy of smart farming and found 141 articles related to agricultural cyber-security. Recently, some survey papers have discussed the security threats and vulnerability assessment for digital agriculture [9; 10; 11; 12; 13]. Most research revolves around traditional threats and mitigation, in particular hardware and software security and cryptography. Typically, in an information network, the confidentiality of data is achieved through encryption, which scrambles the plain text into unreadable (cipher) text. Encryption is physically implemented in electronics. Power consumption, electromagnetic emissions, timing, and thermal signatures provide useful information that may reveal the encryption standard and keys to break the encryption. This extraction of information from the operation of physical hardware is termed side-channel attacks (SCAs) [14]. Recently, researchers have turned their attention to side-channel attacks (SCAs) on traditional computer networks, primarily investigating cryptographic information leakage. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no paper dedicated to side-channel attacks on digital agriculture or smart farming. The closest work is about SCAs on the Internet of Things (IoT) [15]. This research article would be the first to discuss side-channel threats, attacks, and their implications for digital agriculture. We aim to initiate a conversation in this relatively unexplored direction. This paper has the following contributions:  
* We critically evaluated the existing literature on the cyber threats to digital agriculture. * Details of SCA threats to digital agriculture and their implications are presented.