Hacker News

I can imagine that there's already an industrial security company at their door, offering a solution to prevent this from happening ever again, already tailored just for them.

Maybe it's even honestly not related to the attack.

No, this “user story” does not mean the customer actually wants or uses the feature. You do not need remote command and control to tell if your truck chiller is working.

And yet, supermarkets existed in the year 2000, selling products at comparable or lower inflation-adjusted prices, without any of this connectivity.

Yes, a lot of it exists to squeeze a bit more of a margin out of the business, but come on. The alternative isn't going back to the Middle Ages, it's shaving 0.1% off the profit margin. It's OK to wonder if the risk is worth it.

> I spent years trying to convince people to build more secure IoT systems, but they always preferred cheap and easy solutions.

For me this has always been true of systems in general all across the decades that I've worked with technology. It's like pulling teeth to convince anyone in charge that backups or security are even a little bit important until after there's been a costly disaster, then it's all about "Why didn't you warn me this could happen?" - Umm... You mean like every single day for many months until you told me to shut up about it because my paranoia doesn't justify the tiny expense of ensuring you don't lose many tens of thousands of dollars or years of irreplaceable work or important records?

IIoT (Industrial IoT) doesn't have time to deal with the load of bullcrap that cybersecurity is. Half of it is not even about security, but setting up moats and keeping control over users, which is very much not what you want to prioritize when setting up industrial infrastructure, and is rightfully rejected by engineers working there, who are concerned with safety and reliability first and foremost.

Though I'm afraid things are getting worse, or at least it looked so a few years ago, back when I worked in this space. The hot thing in IIoT / Industry 4.0 was basically taking all webshit technologies and deploying them on industrial hardware, to "leverage mature innovation and OSS ecosystem" or such nonsense. The problem (one of many) being, once the engineers were done trimming excessive security measures that negatively impacted safety, they were still left with node.js running on industrial controllers, now even less secure in general than it was originally.

They're on Shodan and there's an admin account with a password that apparently *cannot* be changed.

So you can find one, log in, and have a look for yourself.

You shouldn't.

But you can.

But you shouldn't. Okay? Don't.

I went through a manual you mentioned in another comment. It listed "High level of security against undesired user access" as one of the features but it wasn't expanded upon. So I did more searching and found cybersecurity best practices from Danfoss.

https://www.danfoss.com/en/service-and-support/fix-and-troub...

They highlight connection through a firewall, mention secure remote access methods, monitoring for data breaches, strong access controls, etc. Reasonable, but these are just recommendations, so the stores could have followed all of them or none at all.

An article about Danfoss vulnerabilities mentioned in a different comment (https://claroty.com/team82/research/freeze-the-controller-de...) says

> we searched publicly available internet-wide scanning platforms, including Shodan and Censys, for signatures associated with its management interface. It didn't take long to find what we were looking for. Numerous controllers [2765] were directly accessible from the public Internet.

So none at all is a possibility.

Yes, there is little demand for this sort of thing when the potential loss, should it even come, is already insured. Your customer might actually not be users themselves but their insurance companies. It may be a better model to say pitch to them and then have them offer discounts to their clients who are using your tech that mitigates whatever % risk. Someone pitched that car probe to Progressive after all.

I would have said let them be doomed. But due to late stage capitalism so much has been centralized that everybody is doomed in many cases...

Because in some ticket tracking system, some customer with the most tickets was nearly always calling for a tech to physically start a defrost. Maybe solving that accounts for 2% of support overhead. It’s best to lose that customer. Second best is telling them defrost is remotely-triggered, and then not doing it. Third best is actually triggering it.

The people who should be held liable never will be. Their money is like an impenetrable shield to any sort of accountability. They'll just scapegoat the guy that warned them about the risk repeatedly for not doing more to prevent it.

The benefit is the same as making websites remote controllable. A person then doesn't have to drive in to flip a switch, which means fewer people are needed to operate more systems, saving the company money.

Send those asking that question the scene from Silicon Valley

Part of this story is also attacks on digital price tags on the shelves. Protests in France come to mind.

Perhaps they’re motivated by Europe’s support for Ukraine and the recent data center attacks in Russia?

I think Russia is doing random stuff of the kind, my understanding is it’s just about sawing general chaos, not doing a strong action that would be discussed at a diplomatic level.

Building reps for hacking all the electric cars and starting battery fires

How does this actually work, in practice? If you have read access to sensors, then there's a non-air-gapped network between the control systems and the internet.

If your network isn't air gapped, then it's vulnerable, and attackers will side step the "read only" path to affect control system changes.

This is the way. Read only remote, write access requires on site access.

Exactly, this is bad security plain and simple

Supermarkets very efficiently drive down the cost of food so that food is abundant - basically everyone in developed counties has access to low cost food. Part of that process is not wasting overhead on having people manually checking various gauges.

It’s a very low margin business if you don’t work efficiently you’ll get outcompeted by people who do like Aldi/ Trader Joe’s etc

Comparing Control automation of boring systems running all the time to robots is really funny to me. Those systems weren't previously run by humans before the more electronic approach, the control mechanism was physical in nature but less adjustable.

Most of the HVAC based control system changes are about saving energy, not labor.

Often attacks like this involve first getting on the VPN (leaked creds, a n-day on a web-accessible endpoint, etc) then running wild on the internal services that everyone assumes are safe.

Of course not. The security team was likely blamed, or the techs doing the test. All of the grunt labor should be ready for stupid management decisions on a moments notice and plan accordingly.

[dead]

Also unless managers in grocery store chains means something else than in any other corporation, I somehow doubt it's managers who monitor or "take action" on remotely-controlled fridges.

Do you know how much that costs?!? What about our executive bonuses?

>The product label also says "Made in Denmark.

That label only means most of the final assembly process have been completed in Denmark, it doesn't mean all HW & firmware inside of it have been developed in Denmark by vikings.

A lot of HW & FW by EU companies whose main specialty isn't HW and FW, tends to be outsourced to third party consultancies (sometimes even offshored), who won the bid to do it as cheap as possible, so you never know what quality you're gonna get inside of it, despite the provenance label.

One of the biggest scams right now is the Made in Germany label on cars/household appliances, which isn't in any way an indicator of quality like it used to be.

I promise I'm not simping for Danfoss, just because I'm danish, but... Is it really their fault the customers aren't putting these things behind VPN? Yes, the thing should be secure ideally, but why take the risk?

The security advisory linked in that article was published in August 2025. Apparently it took about a year to finish the writeup. Unless the supermarket also spent about a year without upgrading the firmware, it might be a newer vulnerability.

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49508506 - Aug 2026 (239 comments)

They should be treated as pirates (law of the sea). I think terrorist are charged under piracy laws.

Vulnerabilities can be exposed by reporting them to the vendor.

I moved to a new apartment with all this stuff installed.

At first I thought exactly that - just why.

When days started getting warm in the beginning of the summer I started investigating and thought that it might actually be a good idea - you could turn AC an hour before you come home to find cool room.

When summer hit I actually found out that you just leave AC on all the time and it just keeps temperature at 22C or so and there is really no need for it to be connected. You don't want to turn that off as it is more economical to keep the room cool than letting it to get hot and then trying to cool it fast. It barely even showed up on my electricity bill at the end.

So all in all - really not needed.

Connected A/C has been useful for me, because I also have a window fan and outdoor temperature sensors. So when target temp is below indoor temp but above outdoor temp, I turn off the A/C and turn on the venting fan. It's a lot more energy efficient.

Now, is it connected to the internet? Ha ha ha, no.

What regulations would help with this? companies that actually host the models themselves can be regulated but open models can e abliterated or otherwise modified to stop them from refusing tasks. I'd be very wary of any regulations that prevent people from hosting or making their own models and weights.

The overlap between those two events is that digital security sucks ass and that attacks are much easier to mount in an era of agents.

That's way the non-smart walk-in coolers work; every 12 hours they turn off the fans and heat the cooling element for about 15 minutes to melt any ice that's built up on it.

Ice anywhere else is treated as a separate problem and turning the cooler off to fix it is not typically an available option.

Not any of the controls. At best they should simply report temps and operational status.

I think he suggests that manufacturers should be responsible for keeping their products reasonably secure.

Similar issue affected a US military base very recently. Multiple manufacturers doesn't help if they source the same components.

By the way, Soviet refrigerators are immune to this type of attacks.

If what's needed is the ability to monitor them, then why are these things remote-controllable?!

Obviously read-only access to some sensor is not the same attack surface as having the ability to remotely shut-down the refrigeration.

There is value in nuance and debating whether the solution should be scaled down to say a store ( or only available on local vlan or something), but I think the value of discussing that is kinda diminishing, when, apparently, the controls for all stores can be done from the same hit.

But to address your specific point:

being able to monitor does not ( or at least should not ) automatically equal put it on the web

This still shouldn't be online. They can be networked, if you need remote monitoring, but that's different from being online (at least in my definition).

Obviously it's a question of cost and convenience, and just dumping your appliance on the internet and make it phone home is going to be the cheaper option. If you want security those appliances goes on a separate network, which cannot reach the internet.

this definitely does not require a fridge be "online" and have the ability to be remotely programmed. At the very least have the monitoring and potentially I/O capabilities in a different device that can easily be removed from the system. Integrated smart fridges deserve to Suck it, Jin-yang!

<< ignore the incredibly smart people at major international corporations and their strategies.

Ignore may be a tad strong. I am merely asking for hardware that is subject to my control to be within my control. I think somewhere along the way executives got a little to comfortable saying 'they will buy what we give them'.

More to the point, maybe there is exactly too many smart people with agendas that don't seem to align well with my current needs vis-a-vis fridges:

I want something that keeps things cool with minimum of fuss and does not die upon update.

In short, that executive should be fired as they are not doing their job: they are actively undermining their own market.

> This kind of inspector gadget "smart tech" lunacy has infected basically all consumer products. It's got to stop.

Absolutely, and this is why I refuse to connect any home appliances to the Internet. I have a limited number of Zigbee devices, and they are managed through Home Assistant and can't access the Internet.

> When was the last time you changed the temperature setting on your fridge or freezer?

Then again when was the last time you opened your freezer hundreds of times during one day, letting humid air in and building ice at an accelerated rate? These units actively heat up the back of the freezer (evaporator plate) nightly to quickly melt the ice without warming up the food.

There is no reason to directly trigger it remotely but they probably work on a customizable schedule, to account for different store opening times, timezones, or freezer size and model. The hackers could target that schedule to make the defrost last longer.

well they weren't shut down. just adjusted. and the adjustment range apparently went up all the way to +50 centigrade...

The article makes it sound like these were intentionally networked refrigerator control units, not the actual refrigerators. But I’m not an expert, so I can’t rule out that it’s not possible to run a commercial refrigerator without one of these.

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49508506 - Aug 2026 (239 comments)

the sort of people doing this security posture definitely are not up to date on the latest security news...

It would take something truly monumental to make a local supermarket owner even consider the potential for their fridges to be an attack vector.

50C seems a bit overkill for a defrost cycle.

Those devices should be connected to air-gapped local network and not to manufacturer.

> Why the fuck does a fume hood need that?!?!?!?!

Why, so you can turn it on from your smartphone when you're out of town, of course!

Exactly!

It was there when we moved in.

sound an alarm if a stove burner is on but no person is detected in the room

Can you turn that off or do you just have to put up with the noise?

I prefer the freedom of putting a pot of water on to boil and walking off to take a leak, personally. That would drive me absolutely insane.

> Russia will never attack NATO

You think about a frontal attack like in Ukraine, and maybe you're right. But Russia is already waging a much more subtle war against NATO. Look at who's leading the US. Look at Brexit. Or look at who could soon lead France or Germany... Their conventional army may be weak, but they don't need to fire a bullet either.

> NATO is a hundred times stronger than Ukraine,

And the might of the US/UK/etc are a hundred times stronger than the Taliban in Afghanistan, however who ended up winning that war? Or how about Vietnam?

My point being: the size/capability of a military doesn't necessarily result in a win. I think NATO forces have a particular problem of being pretty unmotivated about Ukraine winning.

I would like this to be true but I'm not sure (at least when talking about NATO = Continental Europe). A quick search reveals Russia made 41 jet fighters last year, Europe made 40.

I suspect when it comes to the production of certain kinds of advanced war materiel, like missiles, shells or drones, Europe lags or doesn't have a clear advantage.

GDP doesn't matter, despite European defense stocks benefiting majorly from the Ukraine war, this didn't seem to have translated into a similar increase in output, which indicates there are bottlenecks in the system somewhere.

> Russia will never attack NATO

You're assuming rational behavior, but time and time again world leaders have demonstrated that they will pursue erratic behavior if their feelings or vibe suggest them that behavior to be their way out of their own trouble.

You do know that wars are not “muh supurmun is bazzilion times stronger than your balk!!”?

Russia doesn’t need direct attack on NATO to intimidate, or even destroy the alliance. And even if it did attack NATO member, it is going to be guess what? A discussion. Just like what they have right now. It’s not going to be DEFCON style theatrical attack from the united West on Russia. You know what happens during WW2? When Russia and Germany carved up Poland? Nothing happened when France declared war on Germany. There was a period of 8 months where they just stared at each other. It was called “Phoney war”. Chances are we might witness Russia just steam rolling Baltics while the West talks between each other what to do next.

Drones run on diesel?

They were out of diesel before Trump's announcement.

To be fair, that they are struggling to take over a couple of villages in Ukraine is in large parts due to the intensified arms and ammunition production of the entire EU (and in the past that of the US). And that's only enough for a standstill

Large scale invasion is not likely, but they could try some limited operation to test NATO's unity. Most likely location would be somewhere in the Baltics.

I have read some Asian country's (who are friendly with Russians) government foreign affairs required readings that is like 2 year old by now. Those materials say Russia is being cornered. They had no other option to but to invade Ukraine. But with sanctions they are more cornered and are desparate. They thought China would ally would them but China's selective neutrality is making them desparate. Those documents say that Russia never actually deployed their main regiments and only worked with mercenaries and allied country armies.

No body knows how much petro product Russia is producing or who is buying them. Those diplomatic documents suggest treating simultaneously as a black box and a cornered animal. The financial sanctions actually was a double edged sword considering UK essentially blocked all foreign transactions even for international infrastructure investments Russia made to foreign countries and at the same time from a global perspective UK was not seen as a reliable financial partner. So, Russia is desparate, EU is desparate but they are not allowed to sit in a table to negotiate... Because US will not allow that. If a war happens across EU every party invovled will see this is to be positive thing because for the last decade economies has slowed down and political views has become extremely polarizing. A war at a massive scale brings everyone together for their country and economy jumpstarts.

I might struggle to occupy your garden, but how are you going to stop me from drilling holes in your house and planting lots of rats so they destroy your life and you run away yourself?

Not Europe but a few Baltic states are feasible. No one says they can hold it, but Putin has his own reasons so we should not think we can conclude on future Russian actions based on what we consider reasonable - e.g. no one predicted that a war on Ukraine was likely as it seemed to be completely irrational and self-defeating.

If nothing else, war has been many times convenient to keep regimes in power (see Bush post 9/11 for an obvious example). Putin might want to strengthen his case. See absurd discussions / push for a "Republic of Narva" as an example cause belli.

Never underestimate the stupidity and irrationality of autocratic governments. Putin also decided to invade Ukraine after all even though he should have known better.

> They are struggling to take a couple of villages in Ukraine, why would they invade the EU.

Because Russian leadership is acting in self interest and preservation and a neverending state of war might be what secures its own position and power.

Europe is rearming on the lines of the 1930s, because Russia is struggling to take a couple of villages.

They can't take Kiev but they're threatening Paris.

They cannot win, but they can invade. We're already in a hybrid war. The threat is real and Europe needs to be prepared and be able to stand on its own, especially now that also the US is not only directly threatening EU countries, but is acting against EU security both globally and internally by supporting separatist neo-Nazi pro-Putin parties.

"What could possibly go wrong?"

The grid could stabilize as a side effect. And the cars are already connected to the internet.

You could connect to an on-premise server. As a bonus, the manufacturer cannot disable them and extort money in this case.

Monitoring requires one-way announcements, not bi-directional connections

Gallipolli, 1915:

"Hey, maybe we shouldn't send men over the top only to die in a barrage of machine gun fire..."

"That's just victim blaming--it isn't our behavior that needs to change; it is the enemy's behavior that needs to change."

Victim-blaming is another term that is apparently becoming a meaningless vibe.

> t sounds like you are victim blaming.

It sounds like you think victims are necessarily blameless.

Yes, I always find it very useful to condemn the mosquitoes when someone is bitten. If they aren't heartily condemned, they will be legitimized and emboldened.

The evil victim blamers say "why was she wearing that short skirt?" They don't realize that the mosquitoes are sexist, and that we can and should eliminate all of the mosquitoes so she can wear what she wants.

Turns out it's mandated by law in the EU too

Easy, go to the used lot and get one of the remaining actual cars before they become collectible antiques.

Slate says “any minute now!”

I don't think the definition is changing at all. To me, we've just lost the ability to comprehend sarcasm.

That's because calling an idiot an idiot plainly is apparently considered uncouth and attracts downvotes, flags and downvotes often mean oblivion. In fact you will find do-gooders chome in with "be civil" but you flip the word and it's all kosher. The thing is all of us do and say idiotic things. So that makes a bit tricky indeed.

> in the future being called a "genius" will always be seen as pejorative.

If you are not a genius and someone calls you a genius, well, for you the future is already here, genius! (Shit I didn't really mean that :P)

There should be a name for this style of speech, using "good" to mean "bad".

just like 'Nimrod' becoming an insult

Genius take!

> Connected vehicles are the example that terrifies me the most.

Fortunately, there is a straightforward solution. Find the cellular modem fuse and pull it. You now have a modern, but fully offline car. Security aside, connected cars are absolutely awful for your privacy.

> Wonderful world we live in where refrigerators and cars also become e-waste because a manufacturer gets tired of patching them

We're in a "post-patching world" in that the number of 0days coming out is so rapid, I'm not sure it would even matter.

The physical architecture itself is the problem. There needs to be better controls (physical and software) to access those systems. Airgap possibily.

Exactly. This is fifth generation warfare.

Alternative theory: Google's "mea culpa" on "misalignment incident" while testing the agents using their "next gen frontier model" is coming out in three... two... one...

I think that's exactly what happened. A kid found out (via an LLM or otherwise) that fridges' temperature were remotely controlled, probably with lax security (or no security at all) and decided to play with it.

It's not immediately obvious to me why fridges in supermarkets need remote control; a supermarket is a place where there are always people, it's not a base on Mars. And even if a remote is needed, it should probably not go further than the manager's office.

Come election day, do you really think many people's deciding factor would be a supermarket refrigerator incident from half a year ago? Especially considering that around the same time something far more... shall I say politically meaningful was happening at the same time, such as students protesting the lack of school funding?

Ugh, this is even worse. The vuln was just disclosed a couple months ago, and so it was literally just a matter of time if not all systems were patched.

I can't for the life of me understand why these systems aren't air gapped, or at the very least network access is restricted to a small number of IPs or hardware keys.

> Because it's the EU I have to wonder if they will finally mandate that software go into escrow and be released if support stops.

Hopefully it will extend to consumer tech like iPhones and other “waste as soon as {corp} is done with it”

No need to make assumption here, the article says it clearly:

> Danfoss told AFP in a statement that most of the affected equipment was "legacy" products which "no longer receive software or security updates". It said its AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 fridge regulator systems were notably affected, with a version of the former using "outdated firmware". It added that it had long advised supermarkets to update from those models.

That being said I am curious what is typically the amount of time for software support offered on a newly released equipment and how common it is for super market to use obsolete software (especially for the part which carry some security risk like something with remote control). Also what about the insurance? Will they (fully) cover the financial loss? I don't know what is in their insurance contract and I am not a lawyer but it seems to me that using obsolete software make the supermarket responsible to some extent

I assume you’re talking about a system like this:

https://www.danfoss.com/en/industries/food-and-beverage/dcs/...

I'm with you on the remote monitoring but why do we need remote control?

Dispatch an HVAC tech if an alarm comes up. Physical access should be the only way to shut down a system like this.

That doesn't excuse them being controllable over the Internet. I can understand that remote monitoring is important, but it's in a supermarket. There's always going to be somebody on site who can control things locally. The telemetry can be transmitted via data diode, automatically re-transmitting on schedule so there's no need for any remote control.

“God news shareholders! We have decided that we didn’t make enough sales this quarter so we have EOLed a whole range of products!”

Well, if we start counting from Morris worm, without liability in place, plenty more.

Because it is cool! (pun intended)

For the same reason, we hardly have heating meters in Germany that aren't wireless connected to the maintenance company.

To save costs doing maintenance trips to check their state.

So they can monitor if something goes wrong, have a tech troubleshoot and deploy with the right parts.

Modern HVAC and fire control b systems for buildings are often connected now as well

Somebody wrote the software that is the interface between the fridge and the internet. And while it would be nice if HVAC technicians would remember to only make this software accessible via VPN, it is in fact possible to write software that is reachable from the internet while still being secure

Given that we agree that HVAC technicians can't be relied on for network security, this is 100% on the fridge company for having insecure software. If it's a bad password or an unchanged default password that's still on the fridge company for not enforcing something better

In the 2013 Target attack, the attackers used the HVAC contractors' credentials to gain access to Target's systems. The point of sale credit card terminals (what customers swiped cards and enter PINs) had no real security so the attackers were able to make those get "updates" from their own servers and download malware enabling them to get the magnetic stripe information as well as PIN (for debit cards). That year, I (like about 150,000,000 other people) got a brand new credit card with a new credit card number.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/09/inside-target-corp-days-...

Newer PCI standards require much more secure customer-facing terminals and much more secure back-end systems so that much of this attack could not happen again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Industry_Data_Sec...

> Grocer w/ 2% margins

You have clearly never stepped foot inside an Albert Heijn store.

Leased lines, MPLS, custom routing setups, hell just a VPN that fails closed. There are so many options for doing this, all more secure that just slapping a device online behind whatever router the cheapest ISP gave you.

The problem is that many of these setups are put behind essentially consumer connections, but with a better support contract or simply fitted with a 5G modem and a SIM card from the cell provider with the cheapest plan.

Building a WAN isn't magic, but it does require working with (competent) ISPs and paying the higher cost.

Remote control does not mean "has a public IP address."

Yes you might need to be able to centrally monitor and manage things but that should be happening on a private network.

Surely, there must be a way that does not force the devices onto world wide web..

I'm interested to know how many "legacy" controllers no longer patched by the manufacturer are operating solar and wind farms today.

If it's a lot, maybe the manufacturers should be compelled to provide security patches if remote control is required to operate their products. For the sake of national security, of course.

* Fridges are welcome to send a panic message.

* Fridges are read-only through their remote interface.

Both of these can be true if you must connect them to the internet.

You're saying remote control stops a fridge failing? Or a fail spoiling the food?

I doubt the fridge has a remote-controlled robot arm to unload itself.

That's funny, last I checked my fridge keeps food reliably cold with no internet connection, and most supermarkets have people around all the time to notice such a failure, a plan around such a failure, and expect to have such a failure periodically since fridges break down anyway.

Meanwhile you can use analog gauges if you need perfect max temperature monitoring.

That's what always pisses me off about this. Someone brought up "Hey, if we connect this to the internet to enable that feature, someone will start hacking fridges and hurting our customers, and I don't think the stupid page with a temperature graph on it is worth that tradeoff", and some ass told them to get over it and implement it.

Raymond Chen used to write about feature development at Microsoft, specifically how every single new feature idea started from a negative position, since it requires support and testing and engineering and thought, and has future repercussions, so it's often not a good idea to just add box checking features.

Microsoft believed this in the 90s. For things like UI functionality. That's the effort and thought and restraint required to have a consistent UI, for things to be thought out.

Somehow, between then and now, the industry threw all that thought away, and now everything has 400 totally unused, half implemented, utterly broken features.

Why are we here? "Move fast and break things" just breaks everything eventually. Someone, somewhere, eventually has to fix stuff.

They could just use connected temperature probes though. no need to connect the power supply of the damn compressor to the internet.

You don't need to network the fridge though... You just need a networked sensor...

Monitoring makes sense, but it feels like it makes no sense at all to allow that kind of remote maintenance without staff on-site to OK and verify it - who could then do the maintenance themselves.

Otherwise, this sort of spoilage could easily happen by accident as well.

It seems like the sort of thing you’d do in-store and firewalled from the internet.

That might justify a temperature probe in a dumb fridge. This smells of a salesman being here not an engineer though.

Makes sense but monitoring doesn't mean you have to have remote control of power.

And centralized food destruction.

Given the perfectly workable alternative of not having remote monitoring and simply having the store manager contact a repair tech on the exceedingly rare occasion that there is an issue, yeah I think actually you do need to justify the added complexity and expense of making this kind of mundane equipment internet accessible.

Honestly, if you ever come to Cyprus and get good fries from the potatoes here, freshly cut and fried…

The Belgian fries have no leg to stand on, nothing. Sorry. Just my opinion :) but I’ve been a life long fries lover from Germany - and these beat out all other fries I had so far in Europe at least by a wide margin :P

I know it wasn’t your article but I wanted to spread this important knowledge to the world!!

I didn't expect to spend so much time today thinking about fridges. I have so many questions. If it's all so connected and monitored and notifies of issues, couldn't it notify anyone that the settings are weird, like continuous 50 degree Celsius defrosting? How much access did the hackers have, apart from temperature controls? Could nobody intervene quickly before the damage was done? Was there a way to "unplug" the fridges or they would just keep frying, so they had to get people across all the stores doing manual resets?

And your SIL would just be as likely excited too about a MOEN wifi connected voice controlled kitchen faucet. Ain't it cool!

She will not be as excited however when the water bill comes and cannot pin point where the additional water they claim to have not used has gone.

Then we move on to even more serious potential life changing appliances that are wifi connected of which your SIL would certainly just be as excited about. Wifi connected hot water tanks of which some here know how they work and what this remote ability allows. Ain't it cool!

She will not be as excited however when the medical bills come nor every single passing day when she sees the visible scars she must carry for the remainder of her living days for being 'cool' - ironic huh?

Reality hits hard as most humans are reactive and those that have been in this game for many decades grossly understand the dark side of insecurely connecting devices that have life changing implications. Medical devices companies have already shadowed their software mistakes yet such information only stays in the shadows for so long.

"What you cannot see matters most!" and many tech illiterates are currently learning this in most unfortunate ways. Some of that learning will scar both mentally and physically for life. Ain't it cool!

Many people here reading this are a lot smarter than I and such can therefore extrapolate and add to what is unfolding in the world. It shows little sign of stopping as more and more devices are connected daily under the guise of 'easy'.

Thus the underlying absolute reason to "Stay Healthy!"

> Authentication is hard.

Authentication is easy, getting people (esp. leadership) to give a shit is hard.

Control loop is obviously local and performed by dedicated controller hardware. If you only need remote monitoring then don't expose any management functionality.

If you want remote management, then define an envelope of allowable system parameters that can be controlled remotely. Allowing defrost to be initiated remotely has obvious risks and known solutions - add a hardware interlock, like a physical button or a key switch.

Even if you ignore all other precautions and allow all parameters to be controlled without limitations, strong authentication is still easy to implement, if anyone cares enough to do it.